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Copyright N°_ 






COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



SELECTIONS FROM 

THE WRITINGS OF 

PONSONBY OGLE 



Selections 

FROM THE WRITINGS OF 

Ponsonby Ogle 



NEW YORK 

Brentano's 

1908 






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Copyright, 1908, by 
BRENTAKO'S 



IN MEMORIAM 

"We die — does it matter when ? ; 



-Tennyson. 



For anyone who knew the writer of the fugitive 
pieces brought together in this little book, the first 
feeling, on reading it, will, I think, be one of disap- 
pointment. There are men whose individuality shines 
through their literary work as lamplight through a 
globe of clear glass: there are others of whom that is 
not in the least true. And of the latter class Pon- 
sonby Ogle was emphatically one. To say of him 
"Le style c'est I'homme" would be utterly misleading. 
The style, in his case, is in no sense the measure of 
the man. Brilliant though everything was that came 
from his facile pen — for he could no more be dull on 
paper than in person — nothing that he wrote could 
ever convey, to those who knew him not, an adequate 
sense of the peculiar charm of his personality. And 
to those who knew and loved him the written word 
must needs seem but a slight and utterly shortcoming 
memorial. Nevertheless, it is well that something 
should be put together and printed, in order that those 
who were his friends may be able to catch even the 
faintest echo of his footstep on the stage of life, to 



recall his gay and gallant bearing, his keen, yet kindly 
wit, his whimsical humor, his unfailing loyalty to old 
associates and old associations. 

Had the man whose natural gifts are so imperfectly 
expressed in this book chosen to devote himself to a 
career in any one of the liberal professions, he could 
not have failed to attain a position of high distinction. 
But his nature would not have it so. An inexhaustible 
curiosity to study the passing show (derived, perhaps, 
from his American blood on the mother's side) ; an 
instinctive shrinking from the boredom of a life of 
routine, and a spice of the Bohemian in his composi- 
tion, led him to prefer a life of freedom, which the 
alertness of his mind never allowed to degenerate into 
intellectual idleness, but which brought no distinction, 
as the world understands the term. He deliberately 
chose to explore the byways of life rather than to 
plod the beaten track; of the average man's ambition 
he had none — but, then, he was not the average man : 
those who, like myself, were his comrades at Win- 
chester, at Oxford, and on the "Globe," know well 
that he was something much more than that. He has 
gone from us, all too soon; but his memory will ever 
be kept green and fresh in the hearts of those for 
whom — and for whom alone — the following slight 

memorial of him is intended. 

E. G. B. 



PONSONBY OGLE 

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I was born of respectable parentage in the year 
1855, but at the time my birth attracted no particular 
attention. 

Very early in my career, however, I became the 
object of various complimentary remarks — some al- 
most fulsome in quality — as to my beauty, intelligence 
and resemblance to one or both of my excellent par- 
ents. My head at this period of my life was not so 
easily turned as my stomach, and for many months I 
resisted the temptation to set up in life as a genius; 
but finally I succumbed under the influence of extraor- 
dinary temptation. 

My nurse, a worthy person of a crooning disposi- 
tion, was accustomed to soothe me (as she fancied) 
by breathing warm nursery rhymes over my face 
about bed-time. To one of my sensitive nature the 
rhyme and rhythm of those compositions were in- 
expressibly irritating, and I screamed aloud. The 
protest was probably misunderstood — at least it was 
ineffectual: I was promptly dandled face downwards 

3 



and the offensive lines were chanted again to the back 
of my swaddling clothes. I became silent and thought 
only of revenge. As soon, I vowed to myself, as 
they teach me to read and write, I will myself become 
a poet. Within the few succeeding years, I fulfilled 
my vow. I became a poet, and the writing of poetry 
led me, by natural consequence, to the writing of 
prose. It has been so with many of our best writers 
from Shakespeare to Martin Tupper, and the prose is 
often as unconscious as the prose of Monsieur Jour- 
dain himself. 

I am still alive and in my thirty-ninth year, but the 
habit is beyond all hope of cure. I have lost parents, 
friends, relatives, money, hair and teeth. But I still 
write — verse and prose : it is a matter of D. V. 

It has been suggested to me that a collection of 
some of my most wanton performances would be a 
salutary warning to others; and I comply very wil- 
lingly with the suggestion in the following pages. 
For the benefit of the uninitiated I would merely ex- 
plain that the compositions in which each line begins 
with a capital letter are the poems. 

May 5, 1894. 



"The Globe," January 9, 1888 

SCENERY 

(BY A RETIRED EDITOR) 

I have always abhorred the country— to live in. I 
love Fleet Street not less than Dr. Johnson; I miss a 
lemon as much as Sidney Smith. There are forty rea- 
sons why I breathe freely and joyously in a town, 
and forty other reasons for my mental asphyxiation 
in the country. Depend upon it, the man who first 
invented that ridiculous fable about the town and the 
country mouse was some poor devil of a Western 
country squire, who wanted to persuade his daughters 
that the Exeter shops were finer, and the Exeter 
gaieties more thrilling, than the vanities of London 
town. By which he saved both the expense of posting 
annually 200 miles, and kept his family from mutiny. 

Not but that I love the country. I love it as I love 
a distant cousin, who has me down in his will. I like 
it best removed. De rebus remotis nil nisi bonum. 
To the country I vaguely give the credit of milk and 
vegetables, of beef and poultry, of flowers and fruit — 
all excellent things ; but for me they are grown in 
Covent Garden, or bred in Leadenhall and Smith- 
field, places frequently referred to as authorities by 

5 



my local tradesmen. I have never made any exact in- 
quiry as to whence these things come up to the great 
central markets. They come from the country, prob- 
ably — I am not quite sure about the milk. The 
country has its cabbages doubtless, as the sea has its 
pearls, and the heaven has its stars ; but I have no 
more desire to see a cabbage garden than I have to 
join the pearl fishing fleets, or to go up in a balloon. 
Other products of the country, human ones, I see 
from time to time ; but they do not attract me either by 
their exceedingly healthy appearance or by their in- 
satiable curiosity about what is the best thing to see 
at the theatres. And Boetia may have a clearer sky 
than Athens-upon-Thames ; but the intellectual atmos- 
phere here has less pea-soup about it. 

One thing, however, the country has — so I have 
always been informed — which town has not; that is, 
scenery. In London we have peeps, glimpses, views, 
effects, "bits," and so forth, but not scenery. We 
have architectural rather than atmospheric perspective. 
But I take my scenery where I can, and I fancy I have 
as good an idea as most people what it is like. For 
I have one source of information which is common to 
all Londoners; and a second, almost more valuable, 
which is the valuable privilege of editors. In the first 
place, I have our picture galleries — the permanent in- 
stitutions and the fugitive. Here the country of all 

6 



countries is spread out to my view, and it is generally 
genuine. The artists mostly did these things under 
white umbrellas, in places that have never seen an 
omnibus. For my benefit they actually ate of the 
abominations provided in country hostelries, and ex- 
posed themselves to the attention of curious cows. I 
know that excellent pictures of Venice are painted in 
Maida Vale, and an artist who dines every night at 
my club has for years never failed to produce three 
scenes annually from Catalonia, Algeria, and Cyprus — 
reminiscences of a solitary tour which he made in the 
seventies here and there about the Mediterranean. 
But the country painters go straight to nature in the 
autumn with the regularity of swallows, and they 
bring back for me loch and river scenery, seascapes, 
and landscapes, cornfields and hay meadows, until I 
can almost criticize the painting of a Devon hedgerow 
or point out the faults in a sunset scene in Connemara. 
But my chief knowledge of scenery I derive from a 
source which is common only to my brother editors 
and myself. It is a rich fount of knowledge. It sup- 
plies visions more picturesque than pictorial art, more 
glowing than the colours of the palette, more vivid 
than life itself. It consists of the innumerable de- 
scriptive MSS., which for years it was my privilege to 
read with patient enthusiasm in the editorial chair. 
From these literary masterpieces I learned the re- 



sources of the country; through them I was enabled 
to plunge into scenery of every kind that was ever 
created, and into some that never was; by their kind 
assistance I visited nearly every spot worth visiting 
upon the globe, personally conducted by writers whose 
gifts were of the order of Messrs. Gaze and Cook. 
First by gazing they selected their materials ; then by 
literary skill they cooked them into tempting articles; 
and lastly I devoured the palatable plats in the calm 
light of the editorial sanctum. 

The first thing I have always noted is that scenery 
is much the same all the world over — at least, it ap- 
parently strikes the beholder in the same manner and 
inspires him with the same language. A scene of 
grandeur is before me, it matters not whether in Nor- 
way or Terra del Fuego ; rocks frown and cliffs beetle 
(I have never been quite sure what exactly a cliff does 
when it "beetles," but I never knew a cliff of any pre- 
tensions that failed to do so), the ascent, the descent, 
and the height are all giddy; the waters lap the base 
or toss clouds of spray to the summit, according to the 
state of the weather; and always a seagull (sometimes 
a sea-mew) wheels above. I pass to a different scene 
— a quiet landscape. Here a river glides (occasion- 
ally steals) through a lush meadow; trees bend down 
their great branches to its placid flow; and cows ap- 
pear in the middle distance — horses never. Or I am 

8 



taken away to the wilder hill-side and the river 
changes to a brook which frets, murmurs, babbles, 
sparkles over the stones, amid trees invariably mossed, 
and rocks grey and lichened. At this point poetry is 
always quoted, and my knowledge of English poetical 
language would have sensibly extended if it did not 
occur to everyone to quote from the same poem. 

Another set of scenes describe the country village. 
This is not scenery proper, but it supplies some of the 
elements which occasionally appear in a rustic pic- 
ture. From these I gather that country folk are con- 
tented and picturesque, that their conversational 
powers are limited and in dialect, and that while their 
homes are quaint, picturesque, tumbledown, they 
themselves are honest, open, horny-handed. The vil- 
lagers are, as I have said, merely accessories to 
scenery, and one of their functions is to direct the 
traveller to the spot of which he is in search. This 
they invariably do correctly in MSS., though I have 
been told by wanderers in the country who have sur- 
vived to return to town, that a rustic direction is an 
assistance which has to be severely discounted before 
you can act upon it. Of course, when a son of the soil 
undertakes to personally guide you in the direction he 
takes you by the most admirable short cuts; but this 
he does, within my experience, only in the case of 
lady authors, who appear to exercise the same sort of 



fascination over rustics as over small salons of con- 
temporary novel-readers. 

But I must not omit to mention the leading feature 
of all the scenic descriptions which I have been privi- 
leged to read. There is a unanimous magnificence 
about literary sunsets, which leaves me fascinated 
every time I finish reading one. All the variations of 
red are there, from blood-red crimson to a faint blush 
of pink ; all the shades of yellow, from glowing orange 
to delicate lemon; and "gold" and "golden" are 
thrown in with the recklessness of an Indian nabob. 
I can picture it all, as if I had actually seen it: — the 
broad sun resting on the hills or water (as the case 
may be), then slowly sinking, ruddy and burning, to 
his western couch; the after-glow spreading over the 
sky; and then the pall of sable night wrapping the 
erst glorious scene. But it is not over yet. There is 
one more inevitable feature of a sunset. One lone, 
solitary star shines out in the now darkened sky, as a 
man writes "Finis" at the end of his novel, or puts a 
dash after his signature. That star is the signal man- 
ual of the genuine writer of descriptive articles. Ex- 
igence of space has sometimes compelled me to draw 
my pencil through it; but I have done so with a sigh. 



10 



"The Globe," July 27, 1887 

THE PHILOSOPHER AS KING 

Aristotle says somewhere that any man who culti- 
vates metaphysics after a certain age, say 30, ought to 
be kicked; and we may say the same thing of phi- 
losophy generally. Still, right and left, we come 
across people who, for the life of them, cannot get 
rid of the habit of looking at things philosophically. 
They learned the trick at college, and it sticks to them. 
They are in the position of the "artist" who, one 
crowned day, having drawn the pocket of an elderly 
gentleman blank, couldn't help picking and repicking 
it "just for practice." 

The philosopher, of course, is occupied with many 
things of more practical importance than Ontology. 
Moral Philosophy, for instance, goes straight to the 
basis of all the actions of life, and, from a snake story 
to speculative investments, the rules of right conduct 
are laid down in ethical treatises. Without Natural 
Philosophy and the Royal Society it is questionable 
whether the world would go round. The Philosophy 
of Art is held by those who have written books on the 
subject to have contributed largely to the education of 
the R. A.'s of England ; and since the day of the publi- 

11 



cation of "Sartor Resartus," every noodle has deemed 
himself capable of evolving what he calls a philosophy 
out of anything in the wide, wide world. Thus we 
get those interesting articles — upon the Philosophy of 
Cheeses, of Washerwomen, of Toboganning; "Soap, 
by a Philosopher ;" and "The Stomach Pump, philo- 
sophically considered." Of course, it is impossible to 
say whether the writers of these wise works are very 
young men or very old; but that is merely an aca- 
demical question, and does not interfere with the fact 
that we can rub along practically without reducing 
everything to philosophy. 

Plato conceived an ideal condition of politics — when 
all philosophers should be kings and all kings phi- 
losophers. May this dream long remain in cloudland ! 
We have had one philosophic king in ancient history, 
and his reign was followed by the rebellion of Jero- 
boam. England had one wise king in more modern 
story, and his reign was followed by the decapitation 
of his son. So much for kings being philosophers. 
The other side of the vision is when the philosopher is 
king. We should regard this prospect with equal dis- 
may. Or even in a republic, whose Committee of Pub- 
lic Safety, Town Councils, or Local Boards should all 
consist of philosophers — what would the condition of 
business be? We may remember that it is not quite 
vain to push this question. Unpractical though it may 

12 



seem, it has a genuine interest at the present time. 
The essence of the philosopher is the abstraction of 
himself and his theories from the practical world be- 
fore him. A theory once constructed, it is made to 
descend from heaven and fit itself to every earthly 
position which may present itself. There is the infal- 
lible theory. Circles are perfect, for instance, as the 
old philosophy ran. The perfect bodies, which are the 
heavenly, must move in perfect motions. Ergo, the 
planets must move in circles. Modern parodies of the 
same idea may be found in the utterance of modern 
faddists. Temperance is the ideal; the people should 
only be governed by the people: all men are equal: — 
such are some of the modern philosophies. 

Now place the philosopher in the midst of an or- 
dinary work-a-day world — how does he fare? He 
simply cannot get on. Take him in a small and partial 
instance, when he mixes in the life of ordinary men 
and women. He rises early in the morning; not from 
preference, nor from any anxiety to breakfast off 
worms, but because, from the examination of a large 
number of instances of men who have lived into dod- 
dering decrepitude, he has concluded that early rising 
tends to longevity, and it is obviously the duty of the 
philosopher to spare himself to an unphilosophic world 
as long as possible. An early riser in London, unless 
he happens to be in the vegetable business, is a nui- 

!3 



sance. There is no place for him in the ordinary do- 
mestic economy. Housemaids, with curious weapons, 
designed for the repression of dust and spiders, view 
him with dislike. Stray footmen object to running 
against him in corridors, while they are yet in a condi- 
tion of reproachful habille. He is offered tea, which is 
going up to sleeping beauties; he refuses. His phi- 
losophy has taught him the effects of tea upon the 
nerves. He is thus reduced to early self-communion 
upon an empty stomach, and breakfast finds him a 
jaded man. Or take another scene — a garden party. 
The philosopher arrives in appropriate neglige, a vel- 
vet coat, a floating tie, a soft hat. If he is short- 
sighted and deaf — he enjoys himself, for he is dressed 
more comfortably than anyone present. But if not, 
it cannot escape him that he is in the world of society, 
but not of it. Were he to be suddenly entrusted with 
the regulation of the afternoon's arrangements, chaos 
and dissatisfaction would be the result. He could sit 
down and write off an essay upon the proper conduct 
of a garden-party in Jupiter or Saturn; but on the 
earth, no. 

These illustrations are not merely trivial; they find 
an application in the world of politics. Washington 
Irving, at the beginning of "Knickerbocker's History 
of New York/' set forth "a multitude of excellent 
theories, by which the creation of the world is shown 

14 



to be not such a difficult matter as common folk could 
imagine. " This is quite true. If you have not really 
got to construct a world, toy-building is the easiest 
thing imaginable. "Theories are mighty soap-bubbles 
with which the grown-up children of science amuse 
themselves, while the honest vulgar stand gazing in 
stupid admiration, and dignify these learned vaga- 
ries with the name of wisdom." The events of the 
week, scarcely yet half -concluded, supply already some 
illustration of the bubble-blowing. The thirteenth 
Conference of the Association for the Reform and 
Codification of the Law of Nations, was opened on 
Monday; and great may be the good that will come 
out of it. Here are learned men met together from 
all parts of Europe and America, scarcely hoping 
for any practical results, determined, however, to set 
forth a perfectly blameless theory. But the wheels 
of theory require to be greased with some practical 
oil. Otherwise the theory might as well at once be 
labelled "Very Curious," and stowed away upon the 
shelves of some international museum. Then we have 
the International Arbitration philosophy, and the 
Rights of Man philosophy, and the Natural Relig- 
ion philosophy — and all to what purpose? Mankind, 
as a whole, will never adopt the same dress, food, or 
religion ; but it is easy to prove that mankind is an ass 
not to do so. 

15 



"Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret." 
There may be amusement, and even personal profit, 
in finding something craggy — as Byron wished — 
against which to break your intellect. But facts are 
facts, and no theories, however divine, will ever take 
their place. 

For the legend of Phaeton is always young ; and the 
true beggar on horseback is your modern philosopher 
as king. 



"The Globe" January 19, 1887 

THE LATE CLOWN 

"Here we are again!" With this familiar intro- 
duction the good old clown was wont to make his 
Christmas reappearance upon the boards of panto- 
mime. He does not say it now ; and he has no cause 
to say it. There has been a change — a substitution; 
and we may exclaim sadly with the flea-trainer, who 
had lost one of his performing troupe, and to whom 
another, supposed to be the lost one, had been brought 
back from the person of a distinguished personage in 
the audience : "This is not my Napoleon !" 

The true clown, whose loss we all deplore, was an 
amalgam of native and foreign metal. He had some- 
thing in common with the Shakespearean fool, and 

16 



something with the merryandrew who figures in 
French and Italian masquerade. He may be said to 
be the old court jester dressed in the costume of 
Pierrot. Grimaldi represented in the most admirable 
manner the fusion of these two elements, creating the 
clown as we are familiar now outwardly with him, 
and inventing much of the clown's business. When 
Mr. Robert Sawyer, during a celebrated interview 
with an offended parent, was detected by Mr. Winkle 
senior, in the act of distorting his features, "after the 
portraits of the late Mr. Grimaldi " — an act which the 
old gentleman rightly conjectured to be intended by 
way of ridicule and derision of his own person — he 
was only practising one of the forms of art by which 
Grimaldi won his reputation. "Did you speak, sir?" 
inquired Mr. Winkle of the detected Bob. "No, sir," 
was Mr. Sawyer's unabashed reply. For Grimaldi's 
method was not merely dependent upon quip or joke, 
but upon the humour of dumb pantomime combined 
with a "make-up" in the highest degree comical. This 
was the genesis of the typical clown, whose reputation 
has sufficed for exportation beyond the British shores. 
But there has been an evolution which is constantly 
proceeding; and with it a corresponding evolution of 
the clown. Spectacular display and scenic elaboration 
have largely driven, not only fairyland, but even 
the gaiety of fairyland, out of "Jack the Giant-Killer," 

17 



"Bluebeard," and "Cinderella ;" and, as it is possible 
to see a pantomime nowadays which positively dis- 
penses with a Transformation Scene, so the clown has 
taken lately to think that he can dispense with wit 
and humour, and substitute for them merely acrobatic 
feats. He lounges, no doubt, as usual ; but he can also 
jump through a hoop. His hands are buried in his ca- 
pacious side-pockets according to tradition ; but he can 
turn a somersault with the most deft member of the 
company. That he should have added these to his 
former accomplishments is not to be regretted; but it 
is not merely an addition, it is a substitution. The 
clown has grown less witty and, generally, less funny 
with the growth of his agility. He has cultivated his 
spine and calves at the expense of his brains. No fu- 
ture Hamlet will take up the modern clown's skull and 
moralise over it with a "Where be your gibes now? 
Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were 
wont to set the theatre on a roar ? " Once that was a 
clown, sir, but, rest his soul ! he's dead. 

As it was with Mr. Bob Sawyer in the scene already 
referred to, so it was with the latter day Grimaldi. 
There are no remains of the clown about him "save and 
except the extreme redness of his cheeks," his costume, 
and some still surviving tricks with slides and red-hot 
pokers. The change had begun even in the days of 
Grimaldi, who had a rival in Bradbury, a man not so 

18 



much of elastic humour, as of humourous elasticity. 
It is not essential now that the clown shall sing any 
"Hey-nonny-nonny" song. The call for "Tippety 
witchet" or "Hot codlings" has passed to a demand for 
"flip-flaps" and "cart-wheels." When "les clowns Ang- 
lais" appear upon the stage of the Folies-Bergere in 
Paris, there is no sense of something missing, of an 
absence of humour owing to wit untranslatable into 
foreign language or incomprehensible to foreign ears ; 
for there was never any wit to perish by process of 
transplantation. "Les clowns Anglais" buffet one an- 
other, leap and turn somersaults, dance breakdowns, 
catch hats, climb upon one another's shoulders, and so 
exhaust the list of their bodily accomplishments. In- 
tellectually no demand is made upon them. And it 
might be added that even in matters of exterior the 
clown has fallen from the high estate of his low 
comedy. He even doffs the recognised garb of the 
good old clown. He condescends to swagger in swal- 
low-tails, and exposes the shirt front of common life 
topped by the white tie of evening civilisation. He 
even carries a napkin, and abandons masquerading in 
Robert the policeman's helmet for the meaner role of 
Robert the waiter. The true clown, whose decadence 
we are lamenting, had, indeed, played in all parts that 
offered themselves for his impromptu adoption, but he 
had identified himself with none. He was always 

19 



clown first and something else afterwards. The mod- 
ern specimen is an acrobat or burlesque comedian with 
a slight infusion of the clown. 

That inimitable Dicky Suett, who played the 
"Twelfth Night" clown so much to Charles Lamb's 
delight, was, if we may trust his panegyrist, a blend of 
cathedral chorister with Robin Goodfellow. Lamb's 
sketch of his method cannot be illustrated from the 
boards of any theatre this Christmas. "A loose and 
shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready 
midwife to a without-pain delivered jest; in words, 
light as air, venting truths deep as the centre; with 
idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest; singing 
with Lear in the Tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery- 
hatch." Where can the modern parallel to this be 
found ? True, the part played by Suett was not that of 
the pantomimic clown, but it had the essence in it of 
what the old clown was, and what the modern clown 
should be; and the last words of Dicky to Robert 
Palmer might almost have been prophetic of the part 
to be played by his successors in the broader humour of 
the harlequinade— "O La! O La! Bobby!" 

The clown, like the editor of a comic paper, is al- 
ways said to be a sad man in private life. He is 
credited with "a serious thoughtful forehead," as one 
"in meditation of mortality." This may be well 
enough for private life, or for a comedian like Dodd, 

20 



taking pensively his last strolls in life in the gardens 
of Gray's Inn. But we do not care to have this ex- 
cellent quality of sobermindedness brought before us 
upon the stage. The modern clown impresses the 
spectator with a sense of boredom and monotony, be- 
cause he dishes up the old business without any novel 
flavouring. Hot poker and policeman are well enough 
when served up with new seasoning and sauces, in 
the shape of wit and song and repartee. But toujours 
perdrix is an acceptable menu for nobody, and con- 
tinual grin begets perpetual yawn. "Away fool !" 



"The Globe," November 5, 1886 

A NATION OF GUYS 

When Guido Fawkes (Foulkes, Fowlks, Fooks, or 
however he may be spelled) stored his powder cun- 
ningly under coals and faggots beneath the sacred 
seats of the Gladstones and Bradlaughs of the 17th 
century, he little imagined that he was destined to 
add a noun substantive to the English language. He 
would scarcely have been flattered had he known that 
his Christian name was in after ages to be accepted 
for the synonym for "a fright ; a dowdy ; a fantastical 
or ludicrous figure." Had he conceived this hideous 
probability his hand would probably have trembled 

21 



even more painfully than we know that it did when 
he signed his autograph for the last time. 

In this way to be a godfather to a word of reproach, 
to stand sponsor to a popular mummery of derision, 
to be known to rugged ruffians as "Old Guy," to be 
perpetuated before the eyes of grinning centuries in a 
spineless, nerveless position, head dropping to one side 
and arms hanging helpless — all this is infamy enough, 
and even bigotry might have trembled at this penalty 
of failure. We can well imagine the injured ghost 
of Guido routing up the mysteries of philology in 
order to fix the stigma of the modern word "guy" 
upon some other source of derivation. We can picture 
Professor G. Fawkes ( carefully upon his visiting-cards 
suppressing the full development of that single letter 
G) delivering to ghostly pupils in Hades a learned ex- 
cursus upon the etymology of that fatal word. With 
what persistence would he dwell upon the convenient 
"Guiser" or "Guisard," that ancient Scotch mummer 
connected with old annals of Yule-tide, from which 
our words "guise," and "disguise" are with much prob- 
ability derived ! How he would turn, when he noticed 
his phantom scholars silently gibbering at this so- 
phistical derivation, to another more ancient source, 
and show how the Druids, the priests of the sacred gui 
or mistletoe, were known by the dignified title of Guys ! 
And with what ingenuity he would dwell upon their 

22 



flowing white robes, so far to veil invertebrate droop- 
ing figures, and so manifestly the aboriginal proto- 
plasm of the tattered robes of the modern Fifth of 
November Guy ! In vain, and the professor would feel 
it would be in vain. And as with bony fingers he 
wiped the anguish of penitential marrow from his 
reeking soul, he would hear his philological class van- 
ish into outer darkness with chattering jaws of deri- 
sion and wails of infinite amusement. For from 
Guido Fawkes, and from nothing and nobody else, 
comes "guy," with all its associations of mockery and 
contempt. 

"Let us," as the divines of half a century ago con- 
cluded, "let us apply these things to ourselves." Where 
the philosophy of Guydom comes home to the English 
nation is not apparent at the first glimpse even to the 
less stolid among the British public. The evening of 
the Fifth of November is crowned with the delights 
of marching guys, of blazing tar-barrels, of soaring 
rockets, of perplexing crackers and squibs. In all this 
uproarious jollity no philosophical merrymaker has 
ever been observed to steal aside, and sigh, and drop a 
tear of phophecy over the ceremonies of the night. No 
one has ever written a dolorous ode to prove that such 
as the Guy is, such we all shall be, if the developments 
of modern civilisation only march onwards unchecked. 

Yet the fact is so. Fat men have seen it with sym- 

23 



pathy, and heavy men have pondered over it ponder- 
ously. Our nation is growing thin. We were once 
burly Britons. We once drained our flagons of ale, 
while roast beef of fabulous weight made our solid 
mahogany groan. Once we were proud of the girth 
of our waistcoats, and felt our calves with apoplectic 
satisfaction. Our chairs were more solid than they 
are now; our arm chairs were more capacious. John 
Bull, in fact, was then fat and well liking, and roared 
to all the herds of Europe with a confident conscious- 
ness of the powerful push of his horns. But now he 
is a mere phantom of his former self. His youthful 
hose, well worn, is now a world too wide for his 
shrunk shank. He is passing from a personage into 
a scare-crow — into a Guy, eventually, perhaps, into a 
rag heap. His foot is less broad, his palm less ample, 
his very clothes less voluminous. He no longer in- 
dulges in jack-boots or gaiters; he can no longer en- 
dure the weight of buttons as large as soup plates upon 
his coat; his neck is not swathed in many folds of 
neck-cloth, or comforted with the woollen of varie- 
gated "comforters." He is but the shadow of what 
he was ; he still calls himself John Bull, but he is only 
magni nominis umbra. 

What has done all this? Is it merely the cycling 
decadence of a race that has attained its maximum 
prosperity? or is it a temporary phenomenon due to 

24 



appreciable causes capable of remedy or removal ? The 
former alternative is obviously absurd. The British 
Empire is to-day stronger, more united, more exten- 
sive, more influential than at any other epoch in its 
history. The true cause is undoubtedly temporary and 
to some extent accidental. This once properly under- 
stood, the native Guy will once more recover his 
figure and vigour, and will no longer be a mere homme 
de paille. Science, mistress of the present age — she it 
is who has done this thing. The inspired Ministerial 
organ of Queen Science, has innoculated her subjects 
with a fatal, a selfish creed; a creed shortly expressed 
in five words — "Live as long as you can." We have 
studied with pride the statistics of our population. 
We have struck with comfort the average of our indi- 
vidual existence. We find ourselves more numerous, 
we find ourselves more long-lived, and we put up a 
hymn of thankfulness. Sanitary authorities have done 
much towards this result; and physicians and diet- 
arians and moralists have completed the business. 
We have certainly improved, if not upon Moses and 
Methuselah, at least upon the beer and beef men of 
the last few centuries. And so we are thinner, and 
perhaps less obstinate, less pushing, less enterprising 
than in the days of good Queen Bess or in the times 
when we swore terribly in Flanders. 

And with it we have become more philosophical. 

25 



What else could explain the circulation of the "Spec- 
tator," the "Nineteenth Century" and other similar 
publications? What else can explain that a novelist's 
hero nowadays can combine a love of flirtation with a 
love of Kant? How otherwise can we see without 
lifting an eyebrow an uncut copy of Herbert Spencer's 
latest work lying with a lady's embroidery? But 
there is consolation in this. When vegetarians have 
removed our corpulence, and teetotalism has thinned 
the current of our blood, pale, emaciated, but always 
long-lived, we shall be in a position to embrace the 
tenets of Sakya-Mouni and dive into the mysteries un- 
folded by the Psychical Society. Then, when we have 
ceased to care which way our hats are brushed, when 
almshouses for bankrupt tailors cover the land, and 
when hosiers and washerwomen have taken in the last 
resort to organ-grinding, then we shall all blossom out 
into poetry. All histories will be epics, all leading 
articles lyrics, all prayers will be hymns. The poet 
laureate will sit upon a throne and utter rhymed legis- 
lation to a soft-hatted, ragged-cloaked House of Com- 
mons, and the kingdom of Guys will be come. 

With all these and such like reflections the phantom 
quarters of the original Guido will console themselves, 
as they watch this evening's processions and revive 
once more in memory their horrid recollections of 
torture and death. Those thin and noisy multitudes 

26 



are but shadows of men who seized and punished the 
arch-conspirator. Give them but a little more time; 
let them carry a little further the art of carefully pro- 
tracting their existence, and they will realise the pro- 
phetic conception of a shadowy nation of Guys. 



IN A CONSERVATORY 

There is nothing particular about our conservatory. 
It is spacious, and you can walk about it without fer- 
tilising the plants with pollen conveyed upon your 
head ; and, when our London friends come to visit us, 
they do not find the nap of their top-hats brushed the 
wrong way by great fronds of Dendrifolium gigan- 
teutn. And more: here are comfortable lounge-chairs 
and little tables — from which you may conclude that 
many a plant has been enriched by cigar-ends and 
refreshed with the first squirt of a soda syphon. In 
fact, we live a good deal in our conservatory. 

The moist, green smell of growing nature has a 
hospitable fragrance. There is a benevolent privacy 
about the great ferns and tall grasses which rise above 
the cozy nooks. The surroundings, as it were, invite 
confidences, from the strange stories of garrulous age 
to the lenis susurrus of young lovers whispering in the 
corners. The purple-flowering creepers droop down 

27 



as if to listen, and the stolid cacti crouch in respectful 
breathlessness. It is a place where sympathy is softly 
coaxed to maturity; a green grotto of secrecy, where 
many a quiet prompting of the conscience or gentle 
throbbing of the heart has come to the surface, like 
some curious bubble from the depths, and found re- 
lief by bursting to the friendly air. As we sit in the 
drawing-room, we can note the subtle influence of the 
conservatory as they come in to us for their cups of 
tea. With the elder ones there is more clapping on 
the shoulder, and nodding of genial heads together. 
With the young ones there is more shamefacedness, 
and they give a little conscious look at one another 
as they step into the light of the shaded lamps. 

Such is our conservatory, and such its gentle uses. 
The charm of the place rids it of all suspicion of in- 
trigue; the companionship of plants and flowers in- 
vests it with the virtues of a hermitage. We cannot 
conceive of an elopement plotted behind the stately 
chalices of those white-souled arums, or of words ever 
whispered there which might shock the spirits of the 
flowers. No fragrance more impure than the breath 
of curling Nicotiana is wafted to the presence of pre- 
siding Flora. It is but a humble offering to the flowers 
— from the weeds ; and she takes it as incense offered 
at her shrine, and breathes her influence in return to 
the worshipful company of smokers. 

28 



But when we pass from our conservatory to the 
conservatories of romance, the atmosphere is changed 
indeed. The conservatory of the stage is a little world 
of villainy and imposture. The love-scenes which take 
place there are conducted, not in whispers, but in noisy 
confidences to the gallery. Hands clutch, and do not 
steal together — the kisses may be heard by the fireman 
at the back of the pit. There not the good only but 
the bad make love — gentlemen with heroines' fortunes 
in their eyes, and ladies covetous of some wicked bar- 
onet's lands and title. And while the bad people make 
love, the good people lie in ambush. Every fern of 
any respectable size conceals a virtuous sneak. He 
is generally an awkward fellow, too, for he is apt to 
knock down a flower-pot in his anxiety to hear as 
much as the dress-circle ; and then the detected lovers 
go and look for him in the wrong corner, and give the 
good man time to get out by one of the innumerable 
doors which open out of the stage conservatory. 

The ethics of eavesdropping, as represented in fic- 
tion, seem to require some reconstruction. We are 
familiar in French novels with the most abject devices 
of Parisian gentlemen to see and hear what they ought 
not. M. Adolphe Belot allows his gentlemen to bore 
holes to catch a glimpse of beauty when it is adorned 
the most. M. Dumas His thinks nothing of putting a 
hero's eye to a key-hole. We remember one story of 

29 



his in which a gentleman, invited to supper at a lady's 
house, takes the opportunity of her temporary absence 
to have a look round her bed-room. The incident is 
not mentioned with reproach: it is presented appar- 
ently as the natural conduct, under the circumstances, 
of an unoccupied gentleman. Such gentlemen as these 
would be perfectly willing to carry out the freak of 
the Paul Pry, who posed as a Greek God in the shady 
corner of a conservatory, and enjoyed the conversation 
of couples sitting out the dances. Upon the stage the 
conservatory sneak does not take the trouble to dress 
as Hermes or Apollo: he can listen in his ordinary 
dress clothes. 

And then, the stage conservatory is not like ours, 
an adytum or shrine of sanctity, the last point of re- 
treat from the ordinary crowds of life. It is the en- 
trance-hall for all the dramatis persona. The baronet, 
the lady's maid, the murderer, the detective, share with 
the casual caller the right of entree. The overgrown 
schoolboy uses it as the scene of his practical jokes. 
It is for him that the garden squirt is left handy, that 
he may confound the country cousin with an unex- 
pected shower. The scenic transformation of the con- 
servatory seems to us much as the transformation 
might seem to some mediaeval monk, who, coming to 
life, should find his church, desecrated in the riot of 
revolutionary days, converted now to the uses of the 

30 



public corn exchange ; or as to some old ecclesiastic of 
St. Bartholomew's might have sounded the clang of 
the smithy in the transept of the priory church, and the 
buzz of the impious factory about the ambulatory. 

So we go back to our conservatory, the quiet bower 
of peacefulness and hushing life. The rare exotics, the 
curious foliage which it conserves are as nothing to 
the spirit of which this silent soothing greenery is the 
outward and visible emblem — the spirit of rest, of 
tranquillity, of confidence. Like that embowered cove 
to which the shipwrecked comrades of JEneas drew 
after the tempest which tossed them upon the shores 
of Carthage, it is a symbol of calm after storm, a haven 
of grace for souls that have prayed for deliverance 
from the wind and sea. 



"The Globe" January 21, 1888 

DON JUAN 

To-morrow is the centenary of Byron's birth. The 
recognition of this event requires no apology, for the 
baby who was born on the 22nd of January, 1788, 
made a noise in the world quite disproportionate to 
the short life which he enjoyed. He was a mere youth 
when he startled the world of literature with a satire ; 
and he followed up this surprise by calling forth gen- 

3i 



eral admiration by "Childe Harold," and general scan- 
dal by "Don Juan." His life has had attractions for 
some; his poetry for others; while not a few have 
found satisfaction in the unorthodox character of his 
general reputation. 

Foremost, however, in Lord Byron's literary per- 
formances we must place "Don Juan," and chiefly on 
the grounds of originality and variety. It has never 
been imitated with success, because it is inimitable both 
in the qualities which have won for it general praise, 
and in those which have provoked the general blame. 
The subject was not original, but the treatment was; 
and Don Juan in Byron's hands received the kind of 
treatment which renovates a personality, as much as 
fine feathers can make a fine bird. For Don Juan is 
only externally a fine bird. He passes muster as a 
tolerable individual rather by grace of what we forget 
than of what we remember about him. Stripped of 
his fine clothing he might be a Saint Sebastian to re- 
ceive the arrows of Exeter Hall ; but clad in white-silk 
trunk hose, he is permitted to do what he pleases to the 
strains of Mozart's music. Don Juan or Don Giovanni, 
he is the same in essence; in a poem or as opera he is 
equally tolerated. And yet one scarcely sees why, re- 
membering that so many better men are suffering 
social anathema or moral ostracism. 

This consideration leads up to an ethical fact, and 

32 



goes hard to supporting the theory of the relative 
character of morality. The bigness or littleness of a 
thing depends so much upon the point of view. The 
slight projection upon a Matterhorn comes to be an 
impassable obstruction when we climb to it; the steep 
hill opposite, which we exclaim against as we descend 
into the valley, turns, by a well known law of vision, 
to an easy slope when we approach it from below. So 
in the moral world a character is good or bad in pro- 
portion to the keenness of the eye which we consent to 
turn upon it. Did we choose to see everything, we 
must perforce condemn. If we put the telescope to 
our blind eye we can declare that we do not see the 
signals and determine to continue the action. This is 
our case with regard to Don Juan. Taken in sum — 
the music and the poetry, the manners and the fine 
clothes thrown in, he is tolerated, accepted, welcomed. 
Analysed, he is only fit for the fifth act of the opera, 
when the nemesis of his life comes to him with an ac- 
companiment of demons and red fire. 

The world, however, by general agreement has de- 
cided to admit Don Juan into good company. He has 
become a classical sinner. We can smile without a 
blush at his catalogue of iniquities ; we can shake 
hands with Robinson and call him a Don Juan, to the 
intense gratification of that estimable bourgeois. So it 
is with many similar characters. Lovelace is almost a 

33 



synonym for inconstancy and immorality; but if you 
hail Jones as a Lovelace he will be as pleased as if you 
had called him St. Anthony. He will be even more 
pleased, for in his heart of hearts he regards St. An- 
thony as an impossible monkish fiction. Moral esti- 
mates are formed in an odd way. A smart coat, lace 
ruffles and the interval of a century make Don Juan 
quite presentable ; and Time has done for him what he 
has done for Jack Sheppard, Sir John Falstaff, and, 
perhaps, the blameless King Arthur himself. Time, 
who darkens and mosses the statues of all mortal men, 
whitewashes their characters. The heroes of epic 
story are seen by us only in their abstract presentment ; 
the good lives after them, the evil is interred with 
their bones. So it is with Don Juan. 

After all, is it a paradox to assert that, setting aside 
the admitted vices that may attend it, there is a cer- 
tain fascination about inconstancy? The butterfly has 
been praised by poets for qualities which from the 
point of view of Dr. Watts are simply indefensible. 
And even the pious Doctor himself has condescended 
to admire and recommend to youth similar qualities, 
when displayed by his favorite busy bee. The wind 
is called "inconstant" with a truth to which every 
weathercock can bear witness ; and yet no one blames 
the wind for blowing where it listeth. To be sure the 
moral purpose may make the difference. It is only in 

34 



Ovid that Zephyrus sighs for the nymph. It is only in 
"Hiawatha" that the wind courts the flower maiden of 
the prairie and scatters her life in downy flakes upon 
the air. We may admit the difference, but we cannot 
excuse the metaphor; and when we lightly talk about 
inconstancy, it may be inferred that we do not con- 
demn it too severely. So far, we have only drawn an 
inference from Language; but turning to actual life 
we find the same inference supported by experience. 
Who blames the flirt, but Mrs. Fullquiver, with many 
marriageable daughters? The "Lais multis amata 
viris" is admitted into the social order as the incon- 
stant moon is accepted in celestial circles ; and she has 
as much influence over the tides of masculine passion. 
Lothario is not frowned at, but rather invited out to 
more dances, because the object of his attentions can 
never be accurately predicted for two successive eve- 
nings. When he is once caught, the code of behaviour, 
behind which Breach of Promise lurks as an ultimate 
sanction, forbids him the practice of inconstancy. But 
Don Juan is bound by no such ties — a fact of which 
the famous thousand and three Spanish ladies can 
scarcely have been ignorant. 

It is evident, then, that Don Juan derives something 
of his popularity from a corresponding sentiment in 
the human breast. The sentiment may be coarsely ex- 
pressed, and then we call it by hard names; lightly 

35 



sketched, it is called generally flirtation. When it 
strays from home and passes into bad company, it is 
forgotten, or remembered only to be condemned ; when 
it returns, it is feasted with the fatted calf. In this 
happy condition rests the moral delinquency of Don 
Juan, Lovelace and Lothario. La grande passion is 
for the few, and is said to make them thin; the mild 
manifestations of the same disease are those of which 
account has most frequently to be taken, and the in- 
fected continue to flirt and grow fat. The world has 
agreed to deal kindly with the tendency to 

"Forget that we remember 
And dream that we forget." 

even though a few stray tears may be shed by the for- 
gotten ones. It was not the Romans only who made 
light of the lover sitting all night patiently at his lady's 
door. As one of our own poets has said — and his 
words are much quoted — 

"Out upon it; I have loved 

Three whole days together, 
And am like to love the more 

— If it prove fair weather. 
Time shall moult away his wings 

Ere he shall discover 
In the whole wide world again 

Such a constant lover." 

It is in this spirit that we have agreed to say "Requies- 
cat" to the true character of Don Juan. 

36 



"The Globe" November 3, 1887 

IN THE DENTIST'S ANTE-ROOM 

"Has anybody got any teeth?" said Louis XV. to 
his courtiers. This was before the days of dentistry, 
in those happy times when a man took his toothache 
to the nearest blacksmith, who cured it for the matter 
of a groat or so by the most radical method in the 
world. We have still stoics among us who survive to 
tell the tale of how they tied a string to their tooth 
and to the door-handle, and then asked a friend to be 
good enough to shut the door. Nowadays we scorn 
these cheaper methods and take our trouble to the 
dentist. "Trouble" is the word. By this euphemism 
the dentist of delicate feeling alludes to those agonies 
which the sufferer describes himself in less select lan- 
guage. He makes the whole process of dentistry as 
easy as possible. His reception of you is affability 
itself; his chair is so comfortable as to suggest forty 
winks; the name of his anaesthetic is suggestive of 
hearty merriment; and yet we ungratefully speak with 
abhorrence of a visit to a dentist. If rumour speaks 
truly this necessity of modern existence is shortly to 
be gilded with a further enchantment, and lady den- 
tists will add a fresh charm and grace to the opera- 
tions of stopping and drawing. Then, when pain and 

37 



anguish wring the molar or incisor, a ministering 
angel will stand by your tipped-up person and breathe 
all over your forehead with a sort of divine afflatus. 
At present we only look forward to this pleasure. 

Who does not know the experience of waiting in 
the dentist's ante-room? You knock or ring at the 
door, and are received with hateful alacrity by a boy 
in buttons or a neat maidservant. Personally we pre- 
fer the maidservant. There is a real sympathy in the 
manner in which she takes your umbrella from you, 
and she is apt to look upon you almost tenderly as 
another of "master's" victims. But this first gratify- 
ing sensation is quickly dispelled by the appearance 
of the room into which she ushers us. It has a north 
aspect, and a sort of ancestral appearance. The fur- 
niture is of the heavy order, and there is a superfluity 
of chairs. Here are oil paintings, apparently of de- 
ceased dentists, and always on one, the longest wall, 
is one of those remarkable gloomy pictures in brown, 
measuring about seven feet by four and a half. It 
is a perpetual puzzle to make out the subject of that 
picture. There are trees and a castle, a quantity of 
rocks, a waterfall, several ladies and gentlemen caper- 
ing on horseback at the foot of a cliff, and a hound or 
two. There is a lot of distance, and a vast expanse 
of sky of the most dull and dirty hue. Feudalism in 
brown varnish is the only vague conception which it 

38 



evokes. The sensations of ancient history aroused by 
this work of art are deepened by a glance at the solid 
sideboard, the ponderous clock, and a suit of Brum- 
magem armour in the corner. Just now, the most 
pertinent fact of mediaeval history seems to be the 
dentistry practised by feudal barons who wanted a 
little accommodation from the Jews. 

You glance at the clock. It is either slow or fast — 
if it is going; but generally the clock in the dentist's 
ante-room does not go; probably it is too mediaeval. 
There is no fire in the grate ; it would be too cheerful. 
But joy: here is literature on the table. What are 
these books and papers ? Here is a guide book to Lon- 
don, fifteen years old. Here is one of those volumes 
with an ornamental cover, containing details about 
certain steamship companies. A tract has been dropped 
here by a diligent sower of the good seed; its title is 
"The Nobleman and the Sweep," a story much to the 
advantage of the latter. And here are voting cards for 
charitable institutions, left by old ladies, who carry 
them constantly about in black bags. They set your 
mind thinking of decayed gentlewomen, indigent gov- 
ernesses, the deaf and dumb, seamen's widows — all 
very cheerful and profitable subjects of thought. You 
turn to stray numbers of the "Graphic" and "Illus- 
trated." Old : all a fortnight or more old. You have 
read them all. But here is an odd volume of our im- 

39 



mortal friend "Punch." Age cannot hurt this. "Punch" 
like some other liquors, only improves by age; and 
you take up the volume thankfully, almost cheerfully. 
Is it irony, or what is it? You open at the picture of 
the children dancing upon the dentist's doorstep at 

the joyful intelligence that "Mr. is not at home." 

Your spirits tumble down to zero again. You, alas, 
have had no chance to-day of executing such a joyous 
pas seul. For you the dentist is at home, and in a few 

minutes 

The door opens. The hour has come. You must 
play the man. But no. It is Phyllis again, but not 
to lead the convict to execution. She ushers in a mid- 
dle-aged lady, of the nervous order of creation. At a 
glance, she may be seen to be fidgety. She plumps, 
with a swoon-like plump, into one of the leather arm- 
chairs. (All dentists' arm-chairs in the ante-room are 
of leather, in the execution room of velvet. This is 
a very delicate refinement of cruel kindness.) Phyllis 
looks on her too compassionately, as if she were a mid- 
dle-aged Iphigenia, and retires noiselessly. You are 
left alone with "Punch," the pictures, the tracts, and 
the middle-aged lady. Slowly, but surely, you relapse 
into that crusty condition of mind and countenance 
with which Dr. Johnson sat sullenly in the ante-cham- 
ber of Lord Chesterfield. Behind that wall on your 
left a more favoured caller is being slowly tortured. 

40 



You are like those victims of the Inquisition, standing 
in the torture chamber, while the rack is yet covered 
with the folds of the black cloth. To distract your at- 
tention you turn to the walls again. Now you notice 
other pictures — one of those hideous collections of 
variegated flowers, after Van Somebody or other, and 
another representing two cows standing by a blasted 
and leafless tree, the sort of picture which does duty 
in auction rooms for a Paul Potter. The room grows 
darker. The old lady is reading "The Nobleman and 
the Sweep," and sighs at the third page. You turn 
desperately again to "Punch." It is a hollow attempt 
at gaiety. You might as well be giving a ball in the 
family vault. The old lady has finished the tract, and 
is now examining the voting-cards suspiciously. Prob- 
ably she has the cards of rival candidates for rival 
institutions in that black bag upon her left arm. Then 
you find yourself reduced to wondering what is the 
matter — you beg pardon, the "trouble" — with her 
teeth. Will she be stopped, or drawn? Will she have 
gas? If not will she scream? Or can it be that she 

has come for a new set of 

The door opens again. It is Phyllis. She smiles 
with the air of the governor of the prison coming to 
say to the French murderer, "Jules Favie, the Presi- 
dent has rejected your petition. Courage: the hour 
has come." She says smilingly, "Mr. Smith." You 

41 



rise unwillingly; you were impatient two minutes be- 
fore. As you rise, you envy the elderly lady who has 
taken advantage of the opportunity to swoop upon 
your volume of "Punch." You delay ; you fumble for 
your hat — and gloves — and umbrella. Phyllis directs 
you to the hat and gloves, and explains that your um- 
brella is in the hall. She is inexorable. She draws 
you on to the door. You assume an air of cheerful- 
ness and alacrity. It is a miserable failure. The 
middle-aged lady is almost smiling at your bravado, 
and Phyllis is still sympathetically persistent. Thus 
boldly fearfully, you stagger from the dentists' wait- 
ing-room. 

In another ten seconds you are in the sanctum — in 
the presence of the velvet chair, of the cabinet of in- 
struments of torture, of the little basin upon a movable 
metallic support. And you hear, as it were through 
a mist, a gentle voice saying to you, "Good morning, 
Mr. Smith ; now let us see what the trouble is." 

"The Globe," April 6, 1887 

BREAKFAST IN BED 

This luxury is the privilege of invalids — genuine 
and sham. All except the offensively energetic enjoy 
the prospect of thus stealing a march upon other mis- 
erable mortals, while professing to bewail their hard 

42 



fate in being so unkindly visited by Providence. "How 
are you to-day?" you say politely to the hypochon- 
driac in the afternoon. And the humbug answers 
wearily, "Better, thanks ; but I had to have my break- 
fast in bed this morning." Yet this same gentleman, 
when he opened his eyes about the time which Bishop 
Ken would have advised him to sing lustily — 

"Awake my soul, and with the sun," etc., 
at once without feeling his pulse or looking at his 
tongue in the glass, resolved obstinately to have his 
breakfast in bed. What did he care that he gave the 
leading female of his family endless trouble in excog- 
itating for him a dainty breakfast tray ? What thought 
did he give to the fact that twice he had to ring up the 
indignant Jemima — once for salt, which had been over- 
looked, and again for a second go of everything, diges- 
tible and indigestible? Like Hippocleides or Gallio, 
he was perfectly indifferent to these matters. He only 
knew that he had the pick of the toast rack, that his 
tea was "specially selected," that there was all about 
him a pleasant flavour of family anxiety — as it were, 
petitioning him not to die, not to break out into a rash, 
not, generally, to do anything infectious, expensive, 
and disagreeable. 

The poor man cannot afford to have his breakfast 
in bed. No one under the rank of a voter can be permit- 
ted this aristocratic indulgence. The poor man's duty 

43 



is not to miss a single day's work, except under the 
pressure of sudden death or a summons. All the mor- 
alists assure him that his life's conduct should consist 
in early rising, hard work, the minimum of beer, no 
spirits, or bad language, prompt return to the bosom 
of his family, one pipe, some useful evening reading 
(when possible aloud, for the general edification) and 
bed. This scheme of existence does not provide space 
for malingering, for dainty diseases, for "not feeling 
quite so well this morning," and so absolutely excludes 
the breakfast in bed. It is doubtful even whether the 
poor man would regard it as anything but an annoy- 
ance, a sort of earthquake upsetting of his trivial round 
of common tasks, and a thing to be looked upon with 
suspicion as savouring of rheumatiz, or fever, or, 
vaguely, of being "tuk awful bad." But that which 
is the labourer's Purgatorio is the schoolboy's Para- 
diso. To him to "stop in bed" is heaven, to have 
breakfast in bed is the seventh circle. Setting aside 
the merely animal luxury of the thing, what does he 
not lose by it — loss being to him in these matters the 
most perfect form of gain? Imprimis — one wrestle 
with the gospel according to St. Luke in the original 
Greek; secundo — one morning chapel; tertio — the 
pleasure of toasting two rounds of toast for Jones 
major, and the off-chance of being kicked by that 
dignitary if they are at all burned ; quarto — the annoy- 

44 



ance of telling old Swistail another lie at nine 
o'clock about certain non-forthcoming 500 lines of 
Maro's iEneid ; — and so on. In exchange for these 
privations how delightful the extra sleep, how ap- 
petising the breakfast sent up by incredulous 
Mother Saunders (Matron) — and oh! how ac- 
cursedly annoying when the doctor, making his 
round, pronounces the ailment to be "nonsense," 
and sends the ailing one forth to ten o'clock school. 
But, still, fate cannot touch him. That day he has 
taken breakfast in bed. 

Unhappily there comes a time of life when this 
picnic of the bedroom ceases to be enjoyable. It 
was always, in the eyes of physiologists, an ob- 
jectionable habit. These gentry knew the laws of 
digestion, and its channels, with other inconvenient 
facts of internal economy. And they always pro- 
tested against breakfast in bed, unheeded by the 
youthful sluggard. But as man grows older, he 
goes over to the physiologists. There comes an 
acute sense of draughts upon the middle-aged neck 
if the breakfaster sits up in bed; while, if he lies 
down, he cannot help speculating upon how the 
ancient Romans dodged it at the triclinium. Did 
they, too, find fragments of crustula (Anglice, 
toast) insinuating themselves against remote parts 
of the frame, which had hitherto been considered 

45 



inaccessible? Did they, too, get pins and needles 
in the supporting elbow, and cramp in alternate 
legs? And, then the bother of establishing an 
amicable understanding between the breakfaster's 
legs and the breakfast tray. Some demon seems to 
possess that tray. You keep your eye on it, it be- 
haves beautifully; not a saucer slips, not a cup tips 
over. But turn away your head for two or three 
minutes, and a positive revolt breaks out. There 
is a general stampede of everything to one corner 
of the tray; and blessed is the breakfaster who 
quells that revolt without any more disagreeable 
contretemps than a little strawberry jam upon the 
coverlet. But, of course, the nuisance of crumbs, 
already hinted at, is the chief of all the annoyances 
attending breakfast in bed. What marvellous power 
of travel they have ! A needle in an old lady's body 
does not travel so fast, nor makes its appearance in 
such wholly unexpected places. The most extraor- 
dinary precautions on the frontier are not effec- 
tive against these insidious smugglers. They suc- 
cessfully "run" the custom house barriers of nap- 
kins, and carefully adjusted sheets. Like cholera 
germs, they defy all known laws of transmission. 
A crusty specimen, which you could almost vow 
you had swallowed, will the next moment cheer- 
fully dig you in the thigh, when you believed him 

46 



to have been safely entombed about nine inches 
further up. 

Nor is this an evil only for the day. It hands on, 
like the Greek Ate, a perfect genealogy of irritation. 
Cast your bread upon the waters, and you will find 
it after many days. Cast your toast upon your bed, 
and you will find fragments of it, for at least a 
week — in a well-disordered household, that is to 
say. Of course, this is not as it should be. These 
things do not happen in castles with moats round 
them, nor in Belgrave Square, nor in prison cells 
where prisoners make their beds and lie upon them 
(just as the worthy judge remarked to the offenders 
at conviction). But in the ordinary English house- 
hold, Jemina is guilty of many perfunctory services, 
for which it is merely suicidal to rebuke her; and 
in bed-making she holds the Pharisaical view that 
the making smooth the outside of the eider-down 
and coverlet is quite sufficient for British bodies. 
That is why you know on Tuesday night (and 
through many subsequent nights) that on Tuesday 
morning you had your breakfast in bed. 



47 



"The Globe," February 24, 1891 

THE CARVER 

It is not long ago that every male of any position 
was liable to be called upon to hack at a piece of 
beef or mutton. Either in his capacity as head of 
a family, or in his capacity as armer-in of the lady 
of a strange house, he was doomed to struggle with 
a joint or wrestle with a fowl, until he lost all in- 
terest in his own dinner, and only prayed that no 
one would "come again" to his particular dish. 

The diner a la Russe has largely banished this 
hateful duty, and now very few people of any re- 
spectability can carve with even tolerable decency. 
And no one regrets the change, except perhaps the 
few old-fashioned people who used to pride them- 
selves on their carving, and knew the science of 
making a breast of turkey go round at a dinner of 
fourteen. The rest of us, who have invariably 
missed the jointing of a fowl or a loin of mutton, 
who have turned pale at the sight of a complicated 
fore-quarter of lamb, who have splashed the gravy 
all over the table, and occasionally swept away 
half-a-dozen wine glasses with a nervous elbow, — 
the rest of us are quite content to see all the carving 

48 



done from a side table. We can eat more and talk 
more, and the dinner is much better carved. 

But while the amateur carver is disappearing, ex- 
cept in homely households, the professional carver 
is still with us, and he still preserves his dignity as 
a master and stylist in his solemn department of 
public affairs. You will see him at any restaurant 
where joints have not entirely given place to "for- 
eign kickshaws," and his importance becomes the 
greater as he ministers to the wants of unhandy 
people who can only marvel at his skill. His very 
dress of white marks him out as a sort of high 
priest of an ancient and stately ceremony; and the 
gravity of his demeanour never varies, even if he 
be only engaged in presiding over the sacrifice of 
a beefsteak pudding. You will see him also at 
the club, a personage of scarcely less importance 
than that diplomatist, the butler himself. Here he 
has no distinctive dress — at least, in the most 
stately clubs; but that is all the more reason why 
his gravity should never be even on the verge of 
giving way. As a matter of fact, it never does give 
way. No one has ever seen a carver do more than 
smile a deprecatory sort of smile. 

You note his movements with respect — no joint 
has any terrors for him. His large knife and fork 
are handled with the careless ease of a master; his 

49 



stroke is delivered with the accuracy of a professor 
of fencing. He is impartial too; he does not ex- 
haust all the good cuts for the benefit of a few 
plates; he gives something of the bad with the 
good; but the whole is so artistically disposed that 
the general impression is wholly good, and the 
gradation skilfully concealed by a varnish of all equal- 
ising gravy. 

Remember the carver — that is one of the first 
axioms in the Euclid of the dining room; and in 
that case the carver will remember you. He will 
remember your taste, however absurd, however 
particular. If you love the Pope's eye, he will have 
some of it for you; if you prefer liver to gizzard, 
yours is the liver wing; if you like brown fat, if you 
like your beef underdone, if there is an oyster in 
the last helps of the beefsteak pudding — yours is 
that brown fat, or that underdone cut, or that 
oyster. There are people who look upon the carver 
as if he were a knife-cleaning machine, as if he 
were a mere hewer of joints and drawer of gravy, 
as if he were no more to the diner than the plate, 
the knife and fork, and the napkin. Never was a 
greater mistake. The carver can give you a good 
or a bad dinner according to his interest in your 
happiness; it would be absurd not to create in the 
mind of such an artist a direct interest, a positive 

5o 



determination that you shall be happy, contented — 
and generous. 

Nothing shows the supremacy of a good carver 
more indisputably than his dealings with the fag 
end of a joint or bird. Your amateur will exhaust a 
joint with half a dozen slices; his notion of a bird 
is that of the price-list of a restaurant — two wings 
and two legs. Not so the scientific artist. He knows 
better than to carve a saddle of mutton at right 
angles, which reduces that joint at once to the level 
of an ordinary loin; nor does he waste it with a 
few long cuts which will presently bring him to the 
fat. The somewhat more than half cut, supple- 
mented with a slice of another flavour from the 
hinder part, or with a slice of yet another flavour 
from the undercut, ekes out the impartial "helping," 
and supplies an agreeable combination of quantity 
and quality. When to this is added the interested 
air with which he will perhaps himself present you 
with this work of art, you feel that it would be little 
less than rank ingratitude to be dissatisfied with his 
skill. And the art of bird carving is as subtle. 
Never exhaust the breast in carving the wings. 
With a slice from the breast many less eligible por- 
tions may be made presentable. No good carver 
ever served up a drumstick ; but a slice or two from 
that limb, decorated with a little from the breast, 

51 



a morsel of liver and half a sausage, has frequently 
satisfied even the most exigent appetite. 

Let us then praise famous carvers, and our 
fathers who did not "forget" them. An analogy 
from trade supplies a hint as to their true impor- 
tance in the world of eating. Even as "carver and 
gilder" is a name of importance to all who are in- 
terested in pictorial art, so is the carver the gilder 
also of the banquet in club or restaurant. A bad 
frame has often spoiled a good picture ; bad carving 
has often spoiled a good dinner. It was perhaps 
with some such feeling as this that a famous mis- 
tress of entertainments, in the days when people 
really entertained, used to carve from her own end 
of the table, but, recognising the importance of this 
great social act, would previously dine alone, so 
that her mind might not be distracted from the 
proper performance of what was then one of the 
most serious duties of a host or hostess. 



52 



"The Globe," February 2, 1887 

STOCK IN TRADE PHRASES 

"I'm as innocent as the drivelling snow," pro- 
tested Leander Tweddle. The hairdresser of Mr. 
Anstey's creation may at least be praised for a wel- 
come variation upon the monotony of the old com- 
parison. And the truth of the new comparison is 
as great. For "drivelling," which we may take to 
be "gently falling," snow has, at least in London, 
a better chance of purity than that "driven" sub- 
stance whirled by the wind into fifty dirty corners, 
dashed against grimy area railings after pirouetting 
about a smutty lamp-post, and finally deposited — a 
symphony of grey and black — under a gloomy arch- 
way leading to some court of Erebean darkness. 

These sempiternal adjectives — when shall we get 
rid of them ? We might fancy ourselves in the days 
when the world was young and all the literature of 
a period was concentrated into the utterances of 
wandering minstrels, so faithfully do we cling to 
our time-honoured traditional epithets. That was 
a trick well understood by Homer and his tribe, 
and pardonable in their case in view of the pressing 
demands of hexametric verse. Then all Achaeans 

53 



were well-greaved, all Ethiopians were blameless; 
Hector had always a flashing helm, Ulysses a per- 
manent reputation for the sack of cities; Phthia 
was always the land that brought forth heroes, as 
Achaia was always the country that was grazed by 
horses. The good people of the day were prepared 
for this. They would have missed and resented any 
other ending to the bard's hexameter; just as the 
music-hall never appears to weary of its improvis- 
atore rattling off his stanzas by plentiful assistance 
of recurring tags and catch words. There is a 
certain order of mind, as George Eliot has re- 
marked, upon which repetition, not novelty, pro- 
duces the greatest effect. And it is not perhaps quite 
fanciful to attribute this fact to a certain intellectual 
immaturity — not to say childishness — both in those 
people who 3,000 years ago listened with pleasure 
to Homer and in those who now catch up cheerily 
the words of a chorus from MacDermott. The 
child takes eagerly to reduplication, which is only 
the simplest of all forms of repetition; and from 
crowing "gee-gee" and "puff-puff" to chorussing, 
night after night and day after day, "Two lovely 
black eyes ! O, what a surprise !" is not such a very 
long journey. However, the fact remains that, 
when the world was young, fixed epithets had their 
invariable place in the earliest epics, and were 

54 



handed down to later poets as part of the epic 
tradition. It is for this reason that the schoolboy- 
finds himself perpetually encountering in the ^neid 
"pius" or "pater" ^Eneas, acquires early in life a 
contempt for such a poverty-stricken poet as Virgil. 
He does not naturally appreciate the delicate art 
that knows when to lay aside the conventional 
"fixed epithet." He does not notice that at the 
critical scene in the fourth book the hero of the 
poem is skilfully called "dux Trojanus" — an occa- 
sion on which, as the epigram has it, — 

"Pius iEneas were absurd, 
And pater premature." 

This delicacy of distinction is not for the British 
public. Here is a nation that never wearies of 
"bluff" King Hall, of "good" Queen Bess, of 
"bloody" Mary, of the "pious and immortal" mem- 
ory, of the "judicious" Hooker, and of "rare" Ben 
Jonson — a nation that cannot mention Herrick, for 
example, without calling him "old," or Goldsmith 
without calling him "poor." These adjectives are 
attached, as it were, permanently to the reputations 
of the important personages whom they are sup- 
posed to characterise. Umbra never clung more 
closely to a Roman nobleman at a feast. Death 
is so far from parting them that it even consecrates 
their union. While we vary our epithets for the 

55 



living according to their varying actions, or, at 
least, according to our shifting impressions of their 
sayings and doings, to the dead we are always con- 
stant, and every year only deepens that constancy. 
Posthumous memoirs may shake our impressions, 
but will never tear us from our popular phrase- 
ology, from those fixed adjectives which are strictly 
bound up with our fondest, because they were our 
earliest and most childish impressions. Nations 
feel like individuals in this matter. As Johnny 
Crapaud is scarcely yet dead for the British patriot, 
so "frog-eating" is still for our proletariat the dis- 
tinctive epithet for Frenchmen, and "perfide" is 
married to the French bourgeois conception of Albion. 
Passing from nouns adjective to nouns substan- 
tive, we may notice the same tendency. A happy 
conception, a favourite figure of speech, once crys- 
tallised into a living presentment, enjoys an immortal 
existence upon the tongues and in the imagination 
of a nation. The British lion, the Russian bear, the 
American eagle, John Bull, Brother Jonathan, the 
Heathen Chinee — what amount of writing their 
names upon oyster-shells could banish them from 
our common talk and literature ? We cling to them 
dearly, as every nation does to its epithets for kings, 
and to its Christian names for popular favourites: 
John Lackland, Billy Rufus, Henri le Bon, Charles 

56 



Martel, the Black Prince, Louis le Bien-aime, the 
Great Frederick, Fair Rosamund, Peter the Great, 
Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Tom Hood, 
Jeremy Taylor, — these are but some instances of 
this popular prejudice. These and such like phrases 
bring old friends nearer to us, and the conservative 
instinct of the people does not readily give them 
up in favour of any new fangled nomenclature. Mr. 
Freeman has in vain struggled to reconcile us to 
more correct orthography of Anglo-Saxon names; 
but we remain constant to Alfred and Athelstan 
and Ethelbald, just as we cling to our apocryphal 
stories respecting the discoveries of glass and gravi- 
tation, to the pictures of the meeting of Wellington 
and Blucher after Waterloo, and to our legends as 
to the origin of the Moonlight Sonata and the Requiem. 
And from names and stories we might pass on 
to ideas. These are often, no doubt, embodied in 
a phrase, and thereby rendered only the more en- 
during. They are not one whit the less untrust- 
worthy. People could die for Magna Charta who 
could not mention one of its provisions. Men will 
swear by the Habeas Corpus Act who cannot trans- 
late the name which it bears, and believe in the 
jury system, who do not sincerely trust half-a-dozen 
of their fellow countrymen. "Liberte, egalite, fra- 
ternite," has stirred the spirit of patriots who have 

57 



never deigned to ask themselves if there can be any 
meaning in equality between brother and brother. 
Free Trade has captivated many a voter who has 
never concerned himself with the question of the 
protection of infant industries. Home Rule is des- 
tined perhaps to work in a similar manner upon the 
intellects of the humbly intelligent. There are two 
classes of mankind to whom such phrases greatly 
appeal — the philosophic speculators who live in the 
clouds of a political dreamland, and the mass of un- 
thinking human beings who vaguely hope for the 
unattainable as they hope for a heavenly hereafter. 
As to the practical steps which should be taken 
either to make a theory work, or to convert a phrase 
into a reality, or to win a way to heaven by a 
process of earthly labour — they never give to this 
part of the business the smallest thought. They 
are content to lay hold of the phrase and to let 
others work out the practical salvation of the idea. 
When Ayoub Ben Mirza walked among the 
tombs of the departed, he saw written above their 
resting-places that they all — all, without exception, 
were "Blessed." And to him, who from his child- 
hood had lived in the seclusion of a hermit desert, 
it seemed as if he had lighted upon a new world, 
into which no sin had ever entered, or from which 
all sinfulness had been purged, till he was sadly 

58 



roused from his dream of millenial perfection by 
the careless words of his conductor: — "There they 
lie, indeed; and the stone-carver lies above them." 
Blessed" was but a conventional phrase. 



"The Globe," August 6, 1887 

PHYLLIS 

" 'Why have men to wait on you,' he had argued, 
'when you have women — soft of foot, soft of voice, 
and charming to look at? To take your chocolate 
from James or Adolphe is no gratification at all; 
to take it from Leilah or Zelma is a great one/ " This 
is the apology, scarcely amounting to an "argu- 
ment," for his pretty Easterns, which Ouida puts 
into the mouth of one of her "god-like" heroes; and 
whatever modern morality may think of the Geor- 
gian and Circassian establishment of Chandos, it can- 
not be denied that, as an ideal picture, it is not 
without fascination. But then it is only a picture, 
only a dream descending in the moonlight. It never 
was, nor will be more real than the combination of 
Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Helen, Catullus, Alcibiades, 
and Phoebus Lykogenes — the great Chandos him- 
self. 

We have heard lately the funeral dirge of the 

59 



domestic system chanted by a correspondent of 
"The Times." Are things really so hopeless as this 
despairing one would have us believe? Must we 
all go and live in flats or hotels, have our visitors 
ushered in automatically by a system of lifts, have 
our beds made by machinery, and turn on breakfast 
and dinner as we turn on gas and water? We do 
not believe it; and yet we readily admit that there 
are signs of change upon the domestic horizon. The 
masculine sun is setting; Apollo, of the gigantic 
calves, is going down in the West-end ; and, through 
the flushed evening-light, is growing more and more 
silvery clear the softer form of the feminine moon 
— not Astarte, not Diana, but Phyllis. 

There are some duties which only a man can per- 
form properly. We shall not yet awhile see Boadi- 
cea driving our chariots in the park, or Camilla 
taking out our horses for exercise. But, within the 
house, there is no reason why Yellowplush should 
not give way to Phyllis. Those who have tried the 
change by way of experiment are rarely tempted to 
drift back to the old state of things. Time was 
when men-servants were monuments of their mas- 
ter's respectability ; they were the outward and vis- 
ible signs of his inward and bank-account pros- 
perity. Sir Gorgius Midas was annoyed because 
only three of his numerous sixfooters waited up to 

60 



welcome him when he returned with a friend from 
the club. What he expected to see, what alone 
could have tickled the pride of his aristocratic feel- 
ings, was the door opened by one footman, with a 
butler hovering in attendance and half-a-dozen foot- 
men arranged like statues all the way up to the 
principal staircase. That would have been truly 
Belgravian — the genuine flavour of the Magnifico 
Pomposo of flunkeydom. But the pleasure of a 
whole menagerie of male servants is beginning to 
pall. The private "man" remains still as great a 
comfort as ever; but the footman is growing to be 
a nuisance. Possessing none of the suppleness of 
the foreign servant, he has been killed by his own 
diginity. He "knows his place" too well, and his 
place is likely to know him no more. 

Glance, by way of contrast, for a few minutes 
into the pleasant house of our friend Lucullus. He 
is a man of wealth and taste ; he is beyond the mere 
prejudice of fashion. You ring, and are at once ad- 
mitted. The door is opened quietly, and you are 
ushered in by a smiling Pyrrha, simplex munditiis, 
as in the days of Horace the connoisseur. You are 
not marched in a large footed manner across the 
hall and handed over — man and all — to the tender 
mercies of another stately menial, but Pyrrha trips 
before you, drawing you on noiselessly, gracefully, 

61 



to the hanging portiere beyond. And there Lalage 
drifts down and receives you like a guardian an- 
gel, and takes you up the broad stairway to the 
sanctum of Lucullus and Luculla. You hear your 
name pronounced in a gentle tone, clearly and ac- 
curately; Luculla rises to receive you; with just 
the faintest gleam and rustle, the door has closed 
quietly behind you, and Lalage has vanished. Tea 
will come in presently, and the pleasant experience 
be renewed. By instinct the tables are put in the 
right place; you feel at once that it is not the service 
of mechanical routine; you enjoy a restful sense 
of the right thing being done in the right way — 
with a touch of grace and gentleness, a footfall as 
of a ministering angel. 

There is another form of the same scene, and for 
some people it may have its charm. You cannot 
play tricks with a man-servant, nor express admira- 
tion of his personal charms by a variety of wonder- 
ful grimaces — as Mr. Bob Sawyer wooed the girl 
who opened the door of Mr. Winkle senior's old, 
red-brick house. Mr. Pickwick behaved himself on 
that occasion with a propriety worthy of his spec- 
tacles and gaiters; but the least intoxicated of his 
companions was more flippantly inclined. "There 
is not the least occasion for any apology, my dear," 
Mr. Pickwick had said with good humour, in answer 

62 



to the excuses of Phyllis. "Not the slightest, my 
love," said Bob Sawyer, playfully stretching forth 
his arms, and skipping from side to side, as if to 
prevent the young lady's leaving the room. But 
every caller is not an "odous creetur," and does not 
compel Phyllis to emphasise her distaste for indis- 
criminate attentions by imprinting her fair fingers 
upon the objectionable visitor's face. Still, short 
of that, minds not necessarily ignoble do feel a cer- 
tain satisfaction at making inquiries of a trim little 
figure in spotless cap, cuffs, and apron and im- 
pressionable youth has been known to blush at lay- 
ing paste-board in the hand of Phyllis. Even a 
rough sea-captain has not been unconscious, as he 
was ushered from the door, of a sort of echo in his 
nautical breast of "Farewell, my trim-built cherry." 
In fact, in everyone's heart of hearts there is a 
soft corner for the ideal Phyllis. If Phyllis only 
knew it ! There have been hard things said of her ; 
she has been accused of being too fond of the at- 
tentions of British youth — as if that was not one 
of the charming defauts de ses qualites. She has 
been said to be swift in giving notice, though 
prompt to receive it. Ladies of eagle eye have seen 
her toss her head, when "spoken to" in a manner 
indicative of a "girl who would do anything!" For 
the present there is a little estrangement — a trivial 



misunderstanding. But Phyllis and her mistress 
do not stand apart like Coleridge's famous cliffs, 
the scars remaining to mark their everlasting 
severance. "She will return; I know her well." 
Venus standing on the doorstep will once more be a 
pleasant reality. Afternoon calls will once more be 
a pleasure; afternoon tea will become a foretaste of 
the Mahometan Paradise. Leilah, Zelma, and Zuleika 
may not be there ; but there will be Phyllis and Lalage, 
and all the chorus of handmaidens whom Englishmen 
know by the generic name of Mary. 

She was a barbaric Queen — that famous Dido — 
when she made her great feast for the shipwrecked 
Trojans ; but though fifty handmaidens laboured in 
the kitchen, one hundred other maidens mixed with 
as many youths to serve the dishes and pour the 
wine. Jupiter, that knowing monarch, took his cup 
from the hands of Hebe as well as Ganymede, and 
found, we cannot doubt, his nectar all the sweeter. 
The modern application of the same principle is to 
discard the service of men, to say with old Mr. 
Wardle of his masculine attendant, "Joe, Joe: damn 
that boy!" and to take up the words of Horace, 
applying them to Lalage and Phyllis, or whatever the 
name of the ministering maiden may be — 

"Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, 
Dulce loquentem." 

6 4 



"The Globe" February 7, 188S 

VOICES OF THE NIGHT 

These voices to the poet sound pleasant. They 
wake his better soul that slumbered to a holy, calm 
delight. The poet has a special fondness for spec- 
tres; he likes to see the forms of the departed enter 
the open door, and to mark their slow and noise- 
less footsteps ; he does not even shudder when they 
lay their gentle hands in his. But Jones is not a 
poet, and he simply loathes the voices of the night. 

Jones, who is methodical in his habits of life, has 
divided the voices into three periods — a sort of 
palaeozoic, mesozoic, and neozoic epochs. The 
palaeozoic extends from bedtime till one a. m. ; the 
mesozoic until the first signs and sounds of ap- 
proaching dawn; the neozoic from that time on- 
ward until his tub. And he has proceeded to notice 
this similarity between the geological and the noc- 
turno-vocal epochs. The animate and the inani- 
mate sounds, what he calls the fauna and flora of 
the periods, are peculiar each to its own epoch; 
though not unseldom the connection of the three 
is marked by the recurrence, for instance, of a 
palaeozoic species in the mesozoic epoch, with only 

65 



such differences as are produced by the orderly 
evolution of the kind. 

In the palaeozoic period Jones finds innumerable 
traces of man. At this period man had become al- 
most extinct; many of the race had already been 
laid to rest. But a certain number still survived, 
though our philosopher is not of the opinion that 
the law of the survival of the fittest holds true with 
regard to them. Some he imagines to have been even 
absolutely unfit to be out at this period, and these 
chiefly he pronounces to belong, not to the aqueous, 
but to the bibulous families. From the ioth to the 
12th hour man seems chiefly to have subsisted upon 
cabs, omnibuses, and a curious kind of food called 
"specials." The most remarkable voices of the night 
indicate the paramount necessity which lay upon 
man to procure these necessities of life. The female 
of man is also not uncommon at this period; her 
voice is less strident than the male, but Jones has 
often recorded upon his tympanum some fine spec- 
imens of the mulier ebriosa. This kind is easily dis- 
tinguishable from another species of the same ge- 
nus, for the homo ebriosus is a sort of anemone 
among nightly voices ; it is only half articulate, and 
belongs as much to the flora as to the fauna of the 
palaeozoic epoch. It is rumbling, like the voice of 
the hansom ; grumbling, like the voice of the "grow- 

66 



ler;" heavy and thick, like the voice of the vegetable 
cart plodding on its way up to the City market. 

Most of these almost disappear in the mesozoic 
period. Night has then passed the middle of her 
course ; her steeds are dropping down the height of 
heaven, as the ancients conceived; then sleep is 
given to mortal men — to all except Jones. Now he 
hears an occasional shrill drunkard, a stray, belated 
hansom, the rattle of the fumbling latchkey, or the 
tramp of the policeman going on his rounds. There 
is a steady lumber of wheels, bearing along cab- 
bages, potatoes, and green stuff, and the quick trot 
of the suburban greengrocer's cart; but these are 
only occasional disturbances which, scarcely noticed, 
break the monotony of the quiet of middle night. 
Then begin the mysterious voices. The door creaks ; 
the wind whistles in the chimney; the mouse stirs 
in the wainscot; the window rattles. It is nothing 
— so Jones tells himself as he lies awake ; but it sets 
his soul thinking upon burglars. Ha: what is that 
in the corner? A dark thing: it moves; it takes 
human shape; it is approaching. Bah: it is only 
Jones' greatcoat, hanging on the furthest peg. He 
sneers at himself for his folly, as he turns himself 
round on his pillow. This time he will sleep — and 
to the devil with foolish fancies. But, what is this? 
A step on the staircase outside. A long, cautious 

6 7 



creak. A light footfall; then a quick succession of 
footfalls, and a rustle as of spectre garments. Ghosts 
this time, if ever such a thing as ghosts existed. 
Jones, after dinner, has derided their existence at his 
debating society, and told funny stories about them. 
There is no fun in Jones now, and the perspiration 
is on his forehead. He hears quick breathing out- 
side his door, and holds his own breath to listen. So 
does the wily ghost, with nothing but half an inch 
of deal between them; and it wants yet three hours 
to daylight, three hours of breathless suspense. In 
vain he calls to mind the behaviour of saints who 
have, tackled unearthly visitors with success; in 
vain he tries to recall the exorcisms which they 
found effectual. Only one monotonous line from 
Virgil comes back to him : — 

"Obstupuit, steteruntque corner, et vox faucibus ha sit." 

It is only Miss Jones' favourite Fido after all — 
Fido, upon whom that maiden lady relies for safe 
protection from burglars and other evil men. And 
when Jones realises this fact, another voice of the 
night is heard, a voice tempestuous, passionate, pro- 
fane. It is the voice of Jones at 3.35 a. m., execrating 
the wandering Fido. 



68 



Cats: They are there in legion. On the roof, in 
the back-garden, by the scullery — a whole seraglio. 
They cry aloud to one another under the moon. It 
is the cat of Jones, no doubt, upon hospitable 
thoughts intent. Her master hears her voice, and 
vows to brain her before next night-fall. The 
mournful mew, the peaceful purr of the innocent 
creature who slinks innocently into the breakfast- 
room in the morning, who could imagine that they 
could swell to such cacophony of midnight orgy? 
What diabolic spirit enters into cats in the night- 
time, that tunes their voices to such raking, rasping 
melody? 

A sudden jingle, a rattle, a gallop, a roar of wheels, 
like a whirlwind going for a drive in a dog-cart. Ah : 
a fire engine ; it passes, as it came, most swiftly. At 
least "proximus Ucalegon" is not burning ; but Jones 
lies awake speculating upon the locality and extent 
of the disaster. Another engine — and yet another. 
It must be a big fire. He is almost tempted to get 
out of bed and prospect, but reflects that it is now 
his duty to try to get to sleep and defy the voices 
of the night. 

Vain endeavour : The mesozoic passes away into 
the neozoic period. The light faintly glimmers 
through cracks in blinds and curtains. A pestilen- 

69 



tial cock lifts up his voice and calls to drowsy hens. 
The dull moan of the "hooter" calls the workman to 
the scene of his early labours. The rattle of the 
milkman's cans begins to be heard. The clattering 
newspaper carts hurry by to the paper trains. There 
is a stir below stairs; a sound of the opening of 
neighbours' doors; a ramming and poking, as if all 
the furnaces of the Cyclops were being raked out by 
the giants ; a whirl of scratching brooms ; a clatter 
of scurrying scuttles. Then a rat-tat-tat at the door 
of Jones' room ; and the voice of the maid with his 
shaving water is the last and least welcome of all 
the voices of the night. 



"The Globe," June 8, 1889 

MEIOSIS 

The beautiful figure called Meiosis is not the pri- 
vate property of the grammarians, though they 
make the most fuss about it. Nor is its use confined 
to classical writers, such as Diodorus, Siculus, 
Moses and Miss Braddon ; it is found in profusion 
in the works even of the illiterate; the New Jour- 
nalism knows it; so do the elegant coteries of Bil- 
lingsgate fishwives. 

The grammarians thought to make it more se- 

70 



curely theirs by calling it also Litotes, from the 
Greek word which means simplicity. But simplicity 
in language is not always meiosis, as can easily be 
seen from a single instance. What can be more 
simple than the letter D, followed by what printers 
call a two-em rule? This is really the simplest form 
known to language of an imprecatory expression; 
we doubt whether Archdeacon Farrar or Professor 
Max Muller has met with any briefer anathema in 
the hundreds of languages and dialects into which 

they have dipped. But "d " is not Litotes; 

whereas "bless you" said with a vicious countenance 
by an old gentleman upon whose corn you have 
trodden, is a very good instance of this figure of 
speech. So we prefer the term meiosis, which the 
dictionary defines as "a species of hyperbole, repre- 
senting a thing as less than it is." 

Its use, we say, is common. Some people never 
give an opinion without resorting to it. "How do 
you like that pudding, Jack?" "Not bad, aunt," 
says Jack, with his mouth full. Meiosis in such 
cases is generally avoided by polite society. Soci- 
ety would reply "Delicious. Do tell me where you 
got the recipe." But there are, of course, occasions 
when its use is diplomatically necessary, as in the 
well-known dilemma when Jobson asks you, "How do 
you like that sherry?" Here the case is complicated. 

71 



It is out of the question to say what you want to 
say, which is "Filthy stuff." But neither is it safe 
to say, "One of the finest sherries I ever tasted;" 
for in that case Jobson is sure to reply, "Well, I 
only gave 20 shillings for it, and I think its pretty 
good at that price" — in which case you know that 
"filthy stuff" was the right expression. No; the or- 
dinary guest falls back upon the blessed meiosis, 
and says with an air of subdued criticism, "H'm, I 
wish I may never taste a worse glass of sherry than 
this," which is quite true, and is capable of expan- 
sion (according to the host's next remark) into the 
utmost admiration or contempt. This is the diplo- 
matic use of the meiosis, and may be applied to all 
cases in which the proprietor asks your opinion of 
his dogs, horses, pictures, and property generally. 

Meiosis is most invaluable in the other difficult so- 
cial dilemma when one woman asks your opinion of 
another. We except, of course, the case of a mother 
asking the opinion of her daughters ; good taste here 
counsels only one form of reply. But when at a 
ball or a theatre you are asked what you think of 
"that girl in blue over there," what are you to say? 
It may be the fair enquirer's dearest foe, or it may 
be her fondest friend. The old courtly school knew 
a way out of the difficulty. You were always safe 
when you were expected to say, "I vow, fair madam, 

72 



that for me there is but one beautiful woman in the 
assembly," or "I protest I might have thought her 
beautiful, had you, sweet mistress, not been by." 
This sort of thing is as safe as a house ; but it is no 
good now. Meiosis is the only refuge for us. We 
say discreetly, "not bad figure — eh. Sort of girl that 
ought to dance well," or "Doesn't look a bad look- 
ing girl from here. Who is she?" Excellent "not 
bad." What should we do without it? And please 
observe the non-committal "ought to be able to," 
the qualifying "from here," and the "Who is she?" 
which gives an opportunity of diverting conversa- 
tion from ticklish ground. 

It must not, however, be imagined that the use 
of this excellent figure of speech is confined to the 
conversation of the "classes" any more than it is 
confined to the writings of the classics. Ask a cabman 
to have a drink — what does he say? "He don't mind 
if he do." Ask a bookmaker, after a meeting at which 
all the favourites have failed, what sort of a day he 
has had. He has had a "pretty tidy" day. Praise his 
cattle to a farmer. He assents, adding that they are 
a "niceish lot." This is not modesty; it is merely the 
way people have been accustomed to speak. They 
don't think like that. Find the cabman, the bookmaker, 
and farmer, drunk, and put to them the same questions ; 
the cabman says promptly: "Right yer are, mister. 

73 



I'll take another of gin cold ;" the bookmaker slaps 
his pocket, with a "Best day I've had this long 
time ;" and the farmer is positive that "Better beasts 
you don't see in the whole county." 

But there is also a form of meiosis, neither mock- 
modest nor courtly nor diplomatic, but simply terri- 
ble. When Mr. Squeers had finished his moral dis- 
course upon the impropriety of leaving cold mutton 
fat, and, moistening the palms of his hands, said, 
"Come here" to one of his young friends, there was 
something grim in the bland meiosis of the invita- 
tion. Or to descend a step upon the social ladder, 
mark the soft persuasion of Mrs. Billy Ruffian as 
she says to her youngest boy, "I'll give yer what 
for." No grammarian has ever analysed this re- 
markable sentence, but young Master Ruffian un- 
derstands it well. Akin to this is the cabby's "'Ere 
wot's this ere? Eighteen-pence — all the way from 
Victory. Nice sort of gemman you are, I don't 
think." Now if either Mrs. Ruffian or the cabby had 
spoken out their minds freely they would probably 
have rendered themselves liable under the statute 
of George II. Meiosis has, therefore, its moral uses. 

Our language is full of expressions formed by 
help of this figure of speech. "Not at home" is 
meiosis for "I will not see that odious woman;" 
"elevated" for a very low condition of human nature; 

74 



"not all there" for a lunatic at large ; "thanks, but I 
am rather hoarse to-night," for "these people are 
not worth singing to ;" and so on. It is a still moot 
question whether Grand Old Man is the language 
of hyperbole or meiosis. 



"The Globe," December 22, 1888 

"MERRY XMAS TO YOU" 

It is somewhat depressing to find that even Mr. 
Gladstone, now within a few days of seventy-nine 
experiences of Christmas, can find nothing better 
to say in response to a "Merry Christmas" greeting 
than an elegant periphrasis of "Ditto to you." For 
the puzzle becomes yearly more puzzling — how to 
reply with anything approaching genuine grace to 
the friendly good wishes which are showered upon 
you at this season from every side. 

Let us distinguish in the first place. The land is 
full of humbugs who wish us Merry Christmas in 
hopes of coppers or small silver. These gentry are 
best met with a gratuity, when deserved, or with 
that deafness which is probably that chief ground of 
the adder's claim to subtlety. Dr. Holmes has, in- 

75 



deed, recommended in a similar instance that you 

should 

"Go very quietly and drop 
A button in the hat ;" 

but the palm feels more easily than the hat which 
may be only felt, and the consequences of playing 
tricks upon a gentleman, who one moment is wish- 
ing you every Christmas happiness may the next 
moment bring you a very practical form of unhappi- 
ness. Even if no brutal assault is committed upon 
your person, you are liable to an attack of sarcasm 
such as the Killarney beggar delivered to the great 
American philanthropist. "They call ye Paybody," 
said the patriot, with the scorn peculiar to disap- 
pointed mendicants, "but bedad! I call ye Pay-no- 
body." 

Many of our friends, however, have no particular 
object in offering us good wishes for Christmas be- 
yond a feeling that the conventional phrases are ex- 
pected from them. We should have fired off all the 
phrases first had they anticipated us. The question 
is how to reply. The ordinary mortal smiles with an 
affectation of sincerity, and says, "Thanks — and 
many of them to you," or, "Same to you, old fel- 
low," or, "Aw, thanks: by the way, where are you 
going this Christmas?" with an easy attempt to 
change the subject. But even the most ordinary 

7 6 



mortal must become aware that familiarity has bred 
contempt towards this institution, and as the Christ- 
mas octave draws to an end he becomes shorter and 
more mechanical in his replies to Christmas greet- 
ings. No doubt in the infancy of the world Adam 
said "Good morning" to Eve with a sincerity and 
fulness unknown to these later days. He probably 
used the full phrase "I wish you a good morning." 
But about the time of Abraham, personal pronoun 
and article had disappeared : It was "Bid you good 
day." Then the verb went, when luxury and lazi- 
ness came in with gold and peacocks; Solomon we 
may conjecture, only said, "Good morning to you" 
to the numerous ladies of his family. And, lastly, 
mankind settled down to the brief "Good morning," 
"Morning," or "Morn'n'." 

So it has been, and will increasingly be, with Christ- 
mas greetings. From the old 

"God bless you, merrie gentlemen, 

Let nothing you dismay, 
For Jesus Christ our Saviour, 

Was born on Christmas Day." 

to the modern banality, "With all the compliments of 
the season," we have passed through declining stages 
of genuine congratulation; and "How d'ye do" is 
not more mechanical than "Merry Christmas to you." 
If it were only confined to one day it would not so 

17 



much matter; but, as with Christmas cards, subscrip- 
tions, annuals, boxes and presents, time is taken by the 
forelock and by the pigtail as well. A fortnight be- 
fore Christmas, and a fortnight afterwards, the phrase 
is repeated over and over again. And when January 
is passing into February it is still coming in from the 
friends who didn't see you at Christmas, from the 
relatives who live at the Antipodes and "had almost 
forgotten it was Christmas with the thermometer at 
90 degrees in the shade," from the people who flour- 
ish the proverb about "Better late than never," which 
simply means that they had forgotten all about your 
existence at Christmas. 

And to one and all of these we are expected to make 
some reply. Now, from this social dilemma we be- 
lieve the New Year was specially created. Perish the 
thoughtless one who uses up at one mouthful his 
Christmas and his New Year's blessings. For, if he 
is content to wish you happiness for Christmas, you 
can retort with a prayer for his happiness in the New 
Year. And observe that his reply is handsome; it 
wishes 365 times as much blessing as his opening wish. 
You feel all the satisfaction of the man who receives 
from his wife a pair of slippers and receives in return 
a carriage and pair. It is wrong, of course, to look a 
gift-horse in the mouth, but one cannot help some sly 
comparison as to value even of benediction. Esau on 

78 



a celebrated occasion was quite ready to take a sec- 
ond-rate blessing in default of none at all; and the 
beggar-woman recognises a similar distinction, when 
she says "God bless your honour!" for a penny, and 
"May your honour live a thousand years!" for six- 
pence. 

Still the New Year is not so large a phrase in gen- 
eral acceptation as it should rightly be. It ought to 
mean a whole year — or at least three months ; it really 
is confined in popular idea to a single day — the French 
Jour de VAn. So again we find ourselves at fault for 
an ingenious and novel reply. Why cannot some in- 
ventative brain do for quiet folk what has been done for 
the English toper? His form of salutation is fourfold 
in point and counterpoint : — 

"I looks to you." 

"I 'as your eye." 

"You does me proud." 

"I likewise bows." 
This genial interchange of politeness has all the dig- 
nity of the old minuet ; we only wonder that some Sir 
Arthur Sullivan has not married it to quaint music. 
It is as far removed from the brutal "'Ere's luck" as 
the modern "Morning" is from the ancient, "Bid you 
Good morrow, faire ladye." If some one will only 
do as much for us in the matter of "Merry Christmas 
to you !" we should be infinitely obliged to him. 

79 



"The Globe," January 14, 1888 

OF SLEEP 

BY MASTER FRANCIS BROWN, CLERK 

Sleep hath three parts — the falling off, the slum- 
ber, and the awakening. 

The falling off, likewise, hath two parts, the one 
arguing in what manner and by what means a man 
may fall upon sleep; the second, in what posture. 
Now, briefly, under the second head we may resume 
the diverse disagreements of the medicos, who have 
sorely wrangled thereon — as to wit. The Doctor Sera- 
fino sayeth that the head should be higher than the feet, 
being of those that hold that anaemia of the cerebrum 
is the cause of slumber, or — to state the matter more 
justly — that, at the least, a necessary condition of that 
state must be a quantitative diminution of blood in the 
vessels of the encephalon. Per contra the Doctor 
Chembino protesteth that passive congestion doth 
cause or doth tend to somnolence ; wherefore he would 
have the heels laid higher than the head. With which 
statement of opinion we may profitably abandon the 
learned doctors' disagreements, seeing that no man 
that comes of woman was ever yet known to recon- 
cile their differences. 

80 



But of the manner and means of passing from life 
to that state which the poets have by conceit imag- 
ined to be twin-brother of death yet more diverse opin- 
ions are entertained. There be those that accomplish 
this end by corporeal fatigue, as do runners, boxers, 
players at ball, and such like. There be others that of 
mere head-weariness and inordinate exercise of the 
brain force themselves, as it were, into a lethargy of the 
animal being. Others, by strong drink or infusion of 
potent herbs, have induced a crapulous somnolence, 
which is but a vicious form of slumber, and taketh 
away perchance more than it doth bestow. Now, all 
these extremes, "non per naturam, sed contra naturam, 
Hunt," as the learned Hookeius Gualkerius hath it, and 
are not to be commended by the prudent, slumber be- 
ing but the complementary part of nature's active ex- 
istence, the testimony of its infirmity, the sign-manual 
of the severance of the human copy from the divine 
exemplar. Not but that Homer hath not presented the 
gods to us as taking slumber after the fashion of mor- 
tal men; but in this he doth manifestly err, and in so 
far doth fall short of the truer teaching of Holy writ, 
for the which vide Psalm cxxi. 4. It is evident, then, 
that sleep is a natural process, not to be studiously 
courted, nor obstinately declined. 

Wherefore they be wrong that in jesting do point 
out the sleeper and say, "Lo : he is nodding," or "See 

81 



— again he is dropping off," with other phrases of light- 
mindedness. Nor are they to be praised who do wan- 
tonly proffer wagers of gloves, silken or leathern, upon 
the adventure of embracing one who is in slumber, 
the which prank, unseemly though it be, hath before 
now been played by lewd fellows or by wanton maid- 
ens upon sleepers of the contrary sex. For slumber is 
a solemn thing and a serious, whereof evidence may 
be had in the various notable prodigies that have hap- 
pened unto men in their dreams and visitations while 
asleep. It is, again, but a sorry jest to bandy railing 
proverbs against him that sleepeth long time, as, for 
example, that saying that doth fix and limit the hours 
of slumber in this wise — "six hours for a man, seven 
for a woman, and eight for a fool" — seeing that many 
a man may sleep eight hours by the dial, and awake 
not less wise than the railer. In sum, sleep is of Na- 
ture's gift, and hath in it something divine, solemn, 
and not to be lightly trifled with. 

Now, of slumber itself there be three kinds — the 
light (or uneasy), the sound, and the heavy (or ster- 
torous). Your light sleeper tosseth to and fro, and 
anon muttereth to himself; he flingeth the bed linen 
to floor, and awakening crieth, "I am cold." Your 
heavy sleeper, on the other hand, lieth like a beast, 
and at times will utter strange gruntings and snorings 
by the nose ; from which some have argued against the 

82 



Divine nature of sleep. But to such fat-headed rea- 
sonings we have this only answer to give : Who judg- 
eth of mankind by the light wanton of the play-house, 
and the blusterous braggadocio of the highway ? Who 
taketh conception of a hound from the ragged pur- 
blind puppy and the o'er nurtured swollen "Fanci- 
ullo"? If you would see sleep in its true semblance, 
go to the bedside of the sound sleeper who doth hold 
the mean between the two other extremes of slumber. 
He lieth evenly in his couch; his breath cometh and 
goeth in steady currents; his clothes are gathered 
about him so that you shall not see so much as a wrin- 
kle of disorder; his colour is constant; perchance he 
whispereth a name; he smileth; he is visited with 
pleasant visions ; there is no man happier upon the earth 
nor more unwitting of his own happiness. 

To such an one his awakening — for that was prom- 
ised as the third head of this discourse — cometh not as 
a surprise nor as a thing disagreeable and painful. He 
riseth from his bed, as he went to it, with satisfaction, 
and washeth himself without sourfacedness. For him 
is the beauty of the morning, the sudden pleasure of 
the sunrise, the open greeting of his familiars, the 
thankful breaking of the early bread. He doth not re- 
pine that he hath been roused betimes; he doth not 
frown at his mails and news sheet; he doth not chide 
the hand-maid for matters not worth the chiding of a 

83 



Christian man. With the others it is not so. They 
are even as the thistle down upon the morning lawn 
which, as the sun riseth, is blown hither and thither 
upon every air. One ventureth that he hath been 
awakened too early or too late — with such it is all one ; 
another that his fare lacks savour; another upbraid- 
eth his spouse ; a fourth will chastise the children. So 
each goeth forth unto his work and labour, sore and 
unrefreshed, and forgetful that his evil sleep hath haply 
not come save from the evil manner of his habit of 
life, rails upon nature, having missed the best gift 
which she had to bestow. For surely of all the good 
gifts of nature to man, the best, the most Divine, the 
most salutary, is an easy slumber. 



"The Globe," December 31, 1888-1889 

THE OLD YEAR 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 
ten, eleven, twelve. Finis. Thus the great writer of 
history completes one more work in twelve volumes — 
thirty chapters or so to the volume — and quietly takes 
up a new pen, not for the composition of an effective 
title page, not for the flourishes of an epistle dedicatory 

84 



or an elegant preface, but for the bold matter-of-fact 
"Vol. i. chap, i." of the new history. 

Already we fancy the famous work called for at all 
the libraries, and advertised in all the papers; discus- 
sion goes briskly round — "Is it better than the others ?" 
"Any signs of falling off, eh?" "Tragedy or comedy 
this time?" "Mixed, I suppose, as usual?" Nothing 
will prevent the world buzzing in this way about the 
completed work. It is one of the things which people 
always discuss, just as they discuss Henry Irving, the 
last piece at the Savoy, the inconvenience of fog, and 
where they are going this winter. They have been 
discussed a hundred times, and most people always 
say the same things about them. But it is generally 
felt that it is the natural and proper thing to do. So 
it is done, and we all discuss just now the old year. 

There are those who have solemn reasons for re- 
membering it. For them the twelve volumes of its 
chronicles are condensed to one — nay, even to one 
chapter, to the events of a single day. On that day 
they loved, they married, they lost, they won — in some 
way the current of their life took a new direction, and 
for them the whole year is concentred in that single 
day. This comes to all of us at times; but as a rule 
it is not so. The majority, at least, every 31st of De- 
cember look back at the old year with a vaguely un- 
certain feeling as to what did or what did not happen 

85 



in it ; for them, half the events of '89 might be tumbled 
into '88, and they would be none the wiser. They look 
at the year's obituary and they are frankly surprised; 
they thought half of those who figure in the list had 
been dead "years ago." When did Lord Durdans make 
his speech at the Billycock Club — was it this, or last 
year? Was it only last March that Tomnoddy ran off 
with Gules-Argent's wife? Why it seems eighteen 
months at least. Of such fleeting memories is our sur- 
vey of events composed, and so quickly does the dimin- 
ishing power of distance begin to affect all that is not 
included in the foreground of our general purview. 

And apart from the individual judgment there is to 
large bodies of mankind a notable, as distinct from 
what Poe calls an "immemorial" year. What '74 is to 
champagnes, that, for instance, is '85 to politicians. The 
Revolutionists have their '89, as Loyalists have their 
'45. The "Annus Mirabilis" repeats itself so constantly 
that we are more inclined to wonder at a year which 
brings us no cause for wonder. But surely on the 
whole a year without colour is this year just passing 
away. It has been marked by no earthquakes in the 
social or political or economic worlds. It has wit- 
nessed no Reign of Terror, no Midlothian Campaign, 
no Black Monday. It has gone through its quiet round 
of events, variegated, but not stamped for all eternity, 
by a Prince Rudolph tragedy, a Pigott fiasco, a dockers' 

86 



strike, a Paris Exhibition. The vintage of 1889 will 
scarcely be famous in the cellars of history. 

The public, then, at large is left free to devote itself 
to the usual sentiments which recur at this time of the 
year — to regrets, explanations, resolutions, and prom- 
ises. A. can analyse the cause which led to the 
abandonment of his projected life of teetotallism. B. 
can mourn over the vanities which he did not, as he 
promised himself, "put down." Miss C. can explain 
why her diary begun on January 1, 1889, is still in a 
fragmentary condition; and D. will perhaps be able to 
give good reasons why the account part of his new 
"Diary for 1889" § ot mto a hopeless state of muddle 
by the middle of February. From this point of view — 
still the individual — the unwritten history of the year 
becomes more interesting than the written. The 
"magna opera" which were never published, the proj- 
ects which were never pursued, the reforms which 
were never persisted in, are looked back upon through 
that blessed mist of short memory which, shrouding 
the events of a world, blurr also the shortcomings of a 
worldling. It is a favourite subject for the moralist to 
reflect upon good intentions unfulfilled ; but the average 
man is quite content after a little while to consign his 
good intentions to a place where they are said to make 
very good pavement. 

A more important reflection, perhaps, than what we 

87 



might have become is what we have become. We are 
told that every particle of our natural body is replaced 
every seven years; and the statement is probably as 
true of our intellectual and moral natures. In these 
cases there is, of course, a great element of uncertainty, 
sufficient to disturb any exact conclusions. The two 
forces, which we may vaguely term individuality and 
environment, must obviously be taken into serious con- 
sideration. An idiot who had continued to float about 
the Great American lakes in the barrel in which he had 
shot the whirl-pool Rapids of Niagara seven years be- 
fore, would obviously step out of his barrel pretty 
nearly as great an idiot as he stepped into it. But as 
a rule every year contributes a tolerably constant frac- 
tion towards the entire change of a man's moral nature 
and towards his intellectual growth. From this point 
of view the only question to be asked at the end of the 
old year is the question of "Upward or downward?" 
"Forward or backward?" This change is responsible 
for what is called a changed point of view, and the ex- 
tent of the change would sometimes almost paralyse a 
man, if he could really grasp it in its fulness. It is the 
explanation of many seeming contradictions, and the 
shield by which many a charge of "inconsistency" can 
fairly be warded off. But the inconsistency really ap- 
pears when the individual, now of a new moral and 
intellectual stature, wishes to pose as the individual of 



years ago — to get, in fact, the advantage, of both men- 
tal and moral attitudes. But the world is very quick 
to perceive that the buck of seventy is not at all the 
same thing as the dandy of seventeen. 

On the whole, a great deal of false sentiment has 
been wasted upon the passage of the old year to the 
new. It is nothing more than a conventional crisis of 
history. Every man can make, and does make, such 
crisis for himself ; or rather they come to him without 
any effort on his part. A speech, an accident, a book, 
a meeting, is the turning point of a life; and that 
critical moment may come upon a day which is neither 
the shortest nor the longest, neither the first nor the 
last of any year. 



"TRILBY": AN OPEN LETTER 

Sans rancune, Mr. Punch, I observe that your 
family is going out into the world. Can it be that your 
long — must I say, tedious? — liaison with la veuve 
Ramsbotham has so flouted all the malaproprieties that 
the young people have begun to take dangerous notice ? 
Even the ever-youthful Du Maurier, the ever- faithful, 
the Master of the One Immutable Type of Feminine 

8 9 



Beauty and Purity, has gone a-flirting on his own ac- 
count in the Quartier Latin with a blanchisseuse de fin, 
and has published his reminiscences of la belle Trilby. 

Amazing! mes compliments! 

The impudence and indecency of republishing in 
more or less permanent book form letters written to 
newspapers, private correspondence, magazine articles, 
and stories, and such-like imbecilities, are beyond neces- 
sity of proof. I have done it myself: I know. But 
even in impudence and indecency there should be 
honesty. The republication of this magazine story is 
dishonest. I note — O! the shame of it — alterations, 
additions, omissions. The alterations and additions, as 
evidencing a creditable desire on the part of a scarcely 
fledged author to improve his chirrup, I might have 
forgiven; but not the omissions — not the One Unpar- 
donable Omission. This republication has omitted me. 

It has also omitted Mr. Du Maurier's own drawings. 
Pour cela, passe; encore une fois, mes compliments ! 
But, I repeat, this republican has omitted me. 

Of the "scribe" of "Trilby"*— he calls himself thus 
ten times in his story — "the present scribe" desires to 
speak in all gentle sympathy; of his work, with that 
hush which comes at the prospect of imminent pop- 



* " The first edition of Trilby contained a character supposed to repre 
sent the artist Whistler, who immediately attacked Du Maurier in a series 
of characteristic letters which caused much amazement at the time and led 
to the above parody." 

90 



ularity. The plains of popularity are bestrewn with 
skeletons of the men of many editions; of the much- 
engraved and photo-processed ones; of the monkey- 
minstrels of the hurdy-gurdies. There lie the multi- 
voluminous forms of the Rev. E. P. Roe, Maria Edge- 
worth, and G. P. R. James; there are Marcus Stone, 
maker or maker-up of eternal amantium ires, and 
Frith, the heaven-born auctioneer, save for that fatal 
toss-up which made an artist of him; there are Tosti 
the tinkling and Ivan Caryll, ne Tilkins; there are 
Nahum Tate and Pye, poets-laureate, and Lewis Mor- 
ris, candidate for their shoes; Quilter the 'Arry, and 
Hamerton the 'Arriet, of art criticism; with countless 
other mediocrities. Upon these we look pitifully down 
from the everlasting hills — Beethoven, Velasquez, 
and I. 

Pause, my dear Du Maurier, ere for this poor pop- 
ularity you desert your rightful pre-eminence as the 
Corney Grain of Art. Be warned by the example of 
Oscar, who having published a century of paradoxes — 
the wit of many and the wisdom of one — has married, 
cut his hair, and retired to the decent impropriety of 
the footlights. How much better is unpopularity! I 
also, moi qui vous park, am unpopular. 

But let me return to the Great Omission. In the 
fascinating numbers of "Trilby," as they appeared in 
Harper's Magazine, I read with delight of one Joe 

9i 



Sibley, idle apprentice, king of Bohemia, roi des 
truands, always in debt, vain, witty, exquisite and 
original in art, eccentric in dress, genial, caressing, 
scrupulously clean, sympathetic, charming; an irresist- 
ible but unreliable friend, a jester of infinite humour, 
a man now perched upon a pinnacle of fame (and 
notoriety), a worshipper of himself; a white-haired, 
tall, slim, graceful person with pretty manners and an 
unimpeachable moral tone. My only regret was that 
too little was said about so charming a creation. I 
looked to see more of him in the published three vol- 
umes. But no ! I found the addition of some thought- 
ful excursuses by Mr. Du Maurier upon nudity, agnos- 
ticism, and other more hazardous subjects, which had, 
presumably, been judged too strong for the ice- 
watered, ice-creamed constitution of the American 
Philistine; but I looked in vain for the delightful 
Joseph Sibley. In his place I find a yellow-haired 
Switzer, one Antony, son of a respectable burgher of 
Lausanne, who is now tall, stout, strikingly handsome 
and rather bald, but who in his youth had all the char- 
acteristics of the lost Joseph Sibley — his idleness, his 
debts, his humour, his art, his eccentricity, his charm. 
I rubbed my eye-glass. Je me suis demande pourquoi. 
The answer came to me in a vision of myself. It 
was I, Ich, Io, Yo, Ego — I in all the languages of 
whose alphabet Mr. Du Maurier holds the secret — who 
was the sympathetic, charming, irresistible, unreliable, 

92 



idle, sarcastic, clean, graceful, famous-notorious wor- 
shipper of Himself and art : but I also, the terrible, the 
contentious, the launcher of elaborate epigrams, the 
twopenny cane-wielder, the turbulent libel-auctioneer, 
the scalp-hunter — I, as some trumpery outsider, I think 
Oscar, has called me, the rowdy and unpleasant. 

Lika Joko, I am not rowdy, I am not unpleasant, but 
I can recall with exhilaration that I am delicately con- 
tentious. I am an arrangement of porpoise-hide and 
sensitive plant, a harmony of the dry gelatine and the 
nickel-steel plate. Call me a sweep, if you will; but 
disarrange my harmonies of soot and I write to the 
papers at once. Therefore I can smile at the disap- 
pearance of Mr. Joseph Sibley : je m'etnpresse de faire 
la connaissance de M. Antoine, bourgeois, de Lausanne. 
I am content. Je tiens, I hold, the Anglo-French scalp 
of you, Mr. (or Monsieur) Du Maurier. 

For the rest I pardon you. I can smile now at the 
phrase in which — with some vanity I thought at first — 
you called yourself "a meek and somewhat innocent 
outsider." Your highest ambition in literature (I 
gather from your own chaste words) was to have 
"never penned a line which a pure-minded young Brit- 
ish mother might not read aloud to her little blue-eyed 
babe as it lies sucking its little bottle in its little bassi- 
nette." These are noble words ; but, as you add, Fate 
(or your wicked self) has willed it otherwise. Joe 

93 



Sibley — and Antony of Lausanne, I trust — was a man 
of unimpeachable moral tone, and he could not com- 
mend to British mothers or blue-eyed babies those 
hazardous excursuses of yours to which I have already 
with reluctance (but with infinite zest) alluded. 

The critics, I see, have congratulated you upon your 
Thackerayan manner. "Un echo, un simulacre, quoi! 
pas autre chose." It is unnecessary for me to bid you 
beware of critics. But I admit that you have the 
tenderness adulterated with the discursiveness of the 
Master. And you have some right worthy traditions 
of the lady novelist. You adore Ellen Terry ; you mis- 
quote Calverley; you send your hero travelling "with 
Punch and other literature of a lighter character." 
J'espere! 

But I forgive you these things. I forgive you even 
the metamorphosis of Joe Sibley, for your other 
worthier gifts — "les trots Angliches," the Laird, Taffy, 
and Little Billee, "Soldiers Three" of the Quartier 
Latin of days gone by; above all, for the adorable 
Trilby. After this it matters little whether you dis- 
covered Oscar or whether Oscar discovered you, or 
which was the more valuable discovery. For all old 
fellows of Bohemia you have rediscovered the old cult 
— the cult of Trilbyism. 

Mes compliments j cher maitre! In the lowliness of 

94 



miserable popularity you shall be cheered and sustained 
by the lofty, disdainful encouragement of 

THE GRUB THAT MAKES THE 



REFLECTION: 
Perhaps I 
have let him 
down too eas- 
ily. But, que 

***f •^*- ^ there is good 
in the fellow 
after all. He 
has admitted 
that I am a 
" scrupulously 
clean" — hitter. 





95 



POEMS 



TO MY RED AND BLUE PENCIL 

Small relic of my nights of toil, 
Dear common pencil, thou hast seen 

The flickering light of midnight oil 
Gleam, when no other light had been. 

Sad life was thine : for thou wast fated 

To mark the passages I hated. 

Sore life was thine ; thy life blood marked 
"Hard places" that I led thee through : 

Or on a sea of notes embarked, 
Thou added'st colour to the blue. 

Didst e'er give way ? My cruel knife 

Cut short and so prolonged thy life. 

Each "knotty point" was plain to thee, 
At each "crux" crucified anew ; 

Each "favourite piece" no peace for thee ; 
Each "spat" called forth thy red and blue : 

Till thou at length grown short, my friend, 

"Of many books" didst find "an end." 

My rule of life, "read, mark and learn" ; 

Thy rule of life, "mark red and blue" ; 
What arbiter shall e'er discern 

Which were the harder task to do ? 
Alas ! the blue must be read through 
And I be ready with the blue. 

LOfC. 99 



Farewell, sweet pencil; at the last 
A First to me thy toils did give 

Immortal one! Thy labours past, 
Ever, a votive offering, live. 

No Atropas, no Fate's stern daughter 

Shall cut thy red and blue life shorter. 



TO MAY 

May, thou hast been with us four weeks or so, 
Four weeks of heat or hail or rain or blow, 
With fits of fog and frost and sleet and snow- 
Now go. 



May, once beloved of Flora, gentle May, 
Tender with greenness and with blossom gay, 
Where hast thou wandered, whither stolen away 

To-day ? 



May, we have hated thee, and feared thee so, 
Thee whom it was our pleasure once to know, 
Farewell were mockery : not good-bye — no, no — 

Just go. 



ioo 



1890 

Why should we spoil our decade new by toasting 1890 
In that unutterable slosh called tea, however fine tea? 
No, no ! for me the bottle still, the quarty or the pinty, 
The red or white, to drink till night the health of 1890 ! 



St. Augustine, Fla. 

Feb. 16, 1893 

Algy, my love, I am about to take a 
Voyage by sea to Nassau and Jamaica. 
We start to-morrow in a haste disgustin\ 
So here's a brief account of St. Augustine. 
The rest is silence now, until again in 
Floridian climes I find the rest of Canaan. 
Then once again I will become your penman 
And sketch the darkie gal and coloured gen'man. 
Farewell. I go to feed the ocean fishes. 
Neptune be damned — if this my dying wish is. 



P. S. — I also send herewith a T. O. 
Written by P. O. and dispatched by P. O. 

101 



A LENTEN CONFESSION 

Mrs. Adderley tells me I told her I find 

That the female department is somewhat behind 
Of the masculine ditto in matter of mind. 

For she said that I said that the feminine kind 
Was a trifle restricted, — a trifle confined, 
Was, in short ( — to be short, — ), somewhat short 
of a mind. 

Did I say so? I might have. I think I had dined 
And a puree or entree may frequently blind 
The good judgment of even the male of mankind. 

But swift punishment followed, as swift as the wind, 
An avenger was found for the rest of her kind, 
And dessert was served out to the wretch who 
had dined. 

For the Countess soon gave me a piece of her mind, 
Which, "per specimen sample submitted," I find 
And "I certify hereby" was far from "confined." 

Sealed, delivered and signed 
for repentant mankind 
by the blind, but resigned, 
Mr. Ponsonby Ogle, "the wretch who had dined," 
To the opposite sex, — to the sex with a mind. 

102 



A WONDERFUL COUNTRY 

Land of stupendous portents! 

Land of large fruits and flowers ! 
There through the dreary autumn months 

We spend fantastic hours. 

Most wonderful of regions, 

Beloved of every journal, 
Whence labouring scribblers glean the straw 

To make their bricks diurnal. 

For there the heavens are dancing 

In meteoric capers, 
With shooting stars, all chronicled 

In all the morning papers. 

From boiling point to zero 
The temperature goes ranging, 

And in the Times "Thermometer" 
Records the daily changing. 

There rarce aves furnish 

"White Selborne's" correspondence, 
And holidays evoke the depths 

Of fatherly despondence. 

There before staring sailors 
The great sea serpents wallow ; 

There grow vast gooseberries that defy 
The greediest schoolboy's swallow. 

103 



There every stirring tale of 

Escape or escapade is 
Told, for the sympathy of males, 

By palpitating ladies. 

There evening's "WAR expected" 
Changes to "PEACE" next morning 

There natural convulsions come 
Without a note of warning. 



On these and such like wonders 
The public buzz, like bees on 

The lime-tree blossoms, in that strange 
Land of the silly season. 



A CATCH* 

BY C. S. P. 

If this is what my "s" is, 

If that is like my "a" 
I'm — well, I hate all entry 
Of words un-Parliament'ry — 
But I must say that "bless" is 

Not just what I would say, 
If this is what my "s" is, 

And that is like my "a." 

Mr. Parnell's letter requires no introduction to the English public. 
104 



If this is like my "very," 

And that like my "yours," 
Truth is a taradiddle, 
The outside is the middle, 
The mournful is the merry, 
And indoors is outdoors, 
If this is like my "very," 
And that is like my "yours. 



If this is like my "Chas. S.," 
And that like my "Parnell," 

I yield my known position 

As blameless politician; 

For all men not born asses 
Or idiots, know full well, 

This is not like my "Chas. S.," 
And that's not my "Parnell.' 



So, spite the bolts of Buckle 

And thunder of the "Times." 
A day will come — a season 
When I stand cleared of treason 
To all that sneer and chuckle, 

To all that hint of crimes, 
Despite the bolts of Buckle 
And thunder of the "Times." 

105 



EX-LUCY 

"From the day I first sat in the Editor's chair I have 
hankered after my box in the House of Commons, and now I 
am going back to it; that is all." — H. W. Lucy. 



So! good bye to a year or so's fancies, 

Dreams of conquest and glory galore, 
Dreams of leading the Liberal lances, 

Dreams of battle and slaughter and gore. 

They are gone — they will come now no more ; 
They are passed with the nightmares of Nox ; 

The new broom sweeps the editor's floor ; 
And I shut myself up in my "box." 

All the fictions and fervid romances 

Which I drew from my phantasy's store, 
All the tripping poetical dances 

Which I danced to his pipings — are o'er. 

For the old Irish pig is a bore ; 
And the ram that was lord of the flocks 

Has been stripped of the wool which he wore. 
So I mournfully turn to my "box." 

Like blind Samson, now shorn of my locks, 
I shall grind on the Philistines' floor; 
I shall pass from the editor's door 

To my old Parliamentary "box." 

106 



TO INDIGESTION 

Hence ! Hence ! unbidden guest, 
Thou that in hours of rest 
Broodest beneath the breast 

After deep eating; 
Thou that 'twixt heat and cold 
Tossest the feaster bold, 
All on the carpet rolled, 

Nightshirt with sheeting. 



Thou dost not come to fright 
Bad Earl or wicked Knight, 
As do those phantoms white 

Of faery land's myth ; 
No, but thou comest down 
Unto the lowliest clown, 
Unto such men as Brown, 

Robinson and Smith. 



After the happy hum 
Round the mince pies and plum- 
Pudding, thy torturing numb, 

Fiend, most intense is, 
Then in his midnight bed 
Brown finds (as Virgil said) 
Feet, hands, legs, arms like lead, 

Lead like the senses. 

107 



Then, too, sharp searching pain 
Midway 'twixt toes and brain 
Stabs Smith again, again, 

Backwards and forwards ; 
Then, too, with angry sound 
Robinson kicks around, 
Till all his bed clothes bound 

Helplessly floor-ward. 

So, as in Babel's hall 
Dumbly those f easters all 
Stared at, upon the wall 

Four words tremendous, 
Robinson, Smith, Brown, blue, 
Vision of handscrawl view — 
These two words, only two, 

Haustus sumendus. 



TO TETOTALA 

WITH APOLOGIES TO BEN JONSON 

Drink to me only with thine eyes 

But I will drink with wine ; 
Pour lemon squash within thy cup, 

But alcohol in mine. 
The thirst that in my throat doth rise 

Demands a drink divine. 
And, though thou Zoedone may'st sup, 

It is not in my line. 

108 



I sent thee late some rosy port, 

Not so much meant for thee 
As giving me a hope next night 

Thy drink might decent be. 
But thou at it didst only snort, 

And sent'st it back, sweet T., 
Since when it has been drunk at sight 

Not by thyself, but me. 



THE ALDERMAN'S FAREWELL 

"For the time being there is a turtle famine." — City Press. 

Kalipash, can this thing be — 
Has there come an end to thee? 
Wilt thou never more be seen, 
Kalipee in fat tureen ? 
Farewell happiness for me ! 
Kalipash, kai Kalipee. 

By the flavour of the punch 
We have guzzled down at lunch ; 
By thick turtle and by thin ; 
By the savoury turtle fin ; 
Tell me, can such horrors be, 
Kalipash, kai Kalipee? 

109 



Tip us, then, your flippers, give 
One more feast while yet ye live. 
Once more let us gobble in 
Turtle thick and turtle thin. 
Dying we will drink to ye, 
Kalipash, kai Kalipee. 



MY TROUSERS 

Good-bye, my Sunday trousers; 

Henceforth no more ye may 
Flaunt to the morning service, 

Or gild the wedding day ; 
No more go out a calling, 

No more be stretched at ease 
In hearing of small scandal 

Where ladies sip their teas. 

Henceforth, my week-day trousers, 

Such merriment be yours 
As mine is at the office, 

From weary tens to fours; 
And when the short days shorten 

And blobs of mud begin, 
Yours be the noble duty 

To ward them from my shin. 

no 



My friends, my twin-leg armour, 

Be reasonable and sweet; 
Long have I watched you proudly 

Sweep downward to my feet. 
But lately I must mention 

I've noticed, ill at ease, 
You certainly have tended 

To bagginess at knees. 



You'll make some new acquaintance 

I think you have not met; 
The hat I bought last winter 

And always use for wet. 
And there is too, a jacket 

I think you've not yet seen, 
About the elbows shiny 

And generally green. 



Then, you'll meet other trousers 

That you may like to know ; 
Some from expensive tailors 

And ONE from Savile-row. 
But if you hang down stiffly, 

And do not play the fool, 
They may, perhaps, imagine 

That you were cut by Poole. 

in 



There are who would have sold you 

To Solomon or Mo.'; 
There are who might have tossed you 

To Thomas or to Joe ; 
But Thomas is too stylish, 

Too mean is Moses; so 
Let's, leg in leg, together 

A little longer go. 



SALE OR EXCHANGE 

A CREED FOR YOUNG MEN . 

"I am not sure of it. A Positivist says he does not know. 
I do not know. I leave it." 

I do believe that one belief 

Is good as any other: 
And any murderer or thief 

Is — in a sense — my brother. 
Those who believe in right to thieve 
Should have their fling; 
And murderers I would reprieve 

If I were King. 
I do believe I don't believe 
In anything. 

112 



Voodoo fanatics I have met 

Without repulsive shudder; 
And I believe in Mahomet, 

And somewhat, too, in Buddha. 
On prayer-book I would take an oath 

Most willingly; 
Or kiss the Pope's toe, nothing loth, 

On bended knee. 
My creed assures me they are both 

Fiddle-de-dee. 



I hold a fort within my breast 
That needs no other garrison 
Than a belief in Comte the blest 

And the to-be-blest Harrison. 
For I abhor a positive 

Or Yes or No; 
And live quite ready to receive 

All creeds below. 
All my belief is I believe 

I nothing know. 



313 



CIGARETTE 

O pale cigarette, with those fragrant, 
Those lazy light curls from the East; 

Never puffed by the ragged and vagrant, 
Never puffed by the public-house beast; 

O twirled in red lips and lithe fingers 
Of Felise, Yolande, or Juliette, 

What glamour about thee still lingers, 
O pale cigarette! 



Though the anti-tobacconist's warning 
Should couple thy name with the pipe, 

Thou wilt share the aristocrat's scorning 
Which the riz-de-veau feels for the tripe. 

As the "class" to the "mass" of tobacco 
So thou hast been, so shalt thou be yet, 

In despite this dull season's attack, O 
Thou pale cigarette. 



There is poison, they say, in thy kisses; 

There is death for the lungs that inhale, 
And the cheeks of young masters and misses 

Have turned, as they puffed at thee, pale. 
But, though locks may be whitening and thinning, 

One joy man will never forget, 
Thy first whiff, his disastrous beginning, 
O pale cigarette. 

114 



WANTED— A PHOTOGRAPH 

There's my photo-frame, embroidered 
With three words from "glorious Will !" 

Many a year has seen it empty ; 
Many a year may find it still 

Empty : — For I never knew 

One that was "fair, wise and true." 

Lelia fair is : from her beauty 
Nymphs turn enviously away. 

Brighter hair no sunlight shines on ; 
Sweeter eyes ne'er smiled to-day. 

Lovelier grace is found in few, 

But — but — is she wise and true? 

Delia wise is : of her wisdom 

Jealous Pallas witnesseth. 
Muses nine her birth attended, 

And will close her eyes in death. 
She is most celestial blue ! 
But — but— is she fair and true? 

Celia true is : vestal virgins 
Have not soul than her's more pure, 

And her truth is of that whiteness 
That shall evermore endure. 

Yet — clear gem of heavenly dew ! 

Is she wise and fair as true? 



"5 



Lelia, Delia, Celia ! tell me, 

Where within this world may be 

One — one only — that uniteth 
All perfection's Trinity ! 

Venus, Pallas, Vesta ! do 

Show me one, "fair, wise and truer 



POET AND POETASTERS 

The great man died. The little poet men, 

They took their paper, blotting pads and ink, 
Sharpened their goose-plucked plumes, and wept and 
then 

Sat to their desks and last began to think ; 

(And one there was that also called for drink, 
And deep and often drained the flagon red) 

Till the smooth stanzas flowed with a tink-a-tink, 
And the full moon smiled in from over head 
On little poet men who sang the great man dead. 



116 



"THE WAY THRO' THE WOOD" 

Still is the way, for the air is keeping 

Soft, silent watch, as for some new comer ; 
The fern droops, drowsing, the moss lies sleeping, 
Dreaming the dreams of the last past summer. 
And the birds are but waiting to wake and sing 
The sweet approach of the virgin Spring ; 
When, like angel blessing, as pure, as good, 
She takes her way by "the way through the wood. " 



Still is the wood, for no dryads, peeping, 

Flirt to the fauns, with coquetting faces ; 
The tiny brooklet is stealing, creeping, 
From hiding-places to hiding-places. 

And the hazel and birch are but waiting to fling 
The first-born leaflets to greet the Spring ; 
When, with soft-green kirtle, and soft-green hood, 
She takes her way by "the way through the wood/' 



Still is the ground, till her footfall awaken 

The sound of the growing of grass and flowers ; 
Still is the wind, till the airs be shaken, 
As with dancing zephyrs and sunlight showers. 
And the woodland stairway is cold and grey, 
Till the virgin Spring shall descend that way ; 
Till she stand in her beauty where last she stood, 
When she sighed farewell to "the way thro' the 
wood." 

117 



PRIMROSE DAY— 1888 

Kennst Du das alte Marchen? 

Knowest thou the old, old story? A gay, a gallant 

knight 
That loved a village maiden and rode into the fight. 
And she, poor maiden, loved him, and bound upon his 

crest 
The primrose of her village — the flower he loved the 

best. 



He took the favour from her, he kissed the giver's 

hand; 
There was no stately lady who was happier in the land. 
There was no prouder champion rode forth to win or 

die, 
To triumph or to perish beneath his lady's eye. 



Stern was the fight, and fiercely fierce foemen drew 
their breath ; 

Sword clashed with sword and target, death followed 
hard on death. 

And still through surging battle through all the clang- 
ing hours, 

High above dead and dying he bore the primrose 
flowers. 

118 



But towards the dying evening, when victors spurred 
for home, 

There passed one dark horse, riderless, flecked with 
grey dust and foam. 

And in the hosts of corpses, there, on the battle's plain, 

The primrose knight lay fallen, stained with his life- 
blood's stain. 



The silent moon had risen : the stars shone overhead ; 
She came — the village maiden — to seek among the 

dead. 
And there, with tearless passion, found in that pause 

of fight 
The dying primrose cluster, that crowned her fallen 

knight. 



With living flowers she crowned him, the faithful and 
the brave; 

So for the last time kissed him and laid him in the 
grave, 

And with her own hands planted, with prayers of fond- 
est breath, 

The primrose of her village, the flower he bore to death. 



119 



There, ever in the springtime, through sunlight and 

through showers, 
The country comes to mourn him and deck his grave 

with flowers ; 
Not with proud flowers of brilliance about his place of 

rest, 
But with pale primrose blossoms, the flowers he loved 

the best. 



ARIA 

Take these flowers, keep and love them, 

Corydon. 
For the evening glowed above them, 

And the wan, 
New-born stars stooped down and kissed them, 

Nestling on 
Stream-fed meads, that loved and missed them 

Sore, when gone. 

Then they turned to other flowers, 

Corydon ; 
Filled their petals with dew-showers ; 

Breathed upon 
Other flowers with fragrance tender, 

That anon 
Radiant in day's dying splendors 

Star-like shone. 



120 



But when morn awoke those true loves, 
Cory don, 

Vanished were their new, their few loves ; 
— All were gone ! 

For the fairest gems of even, 

Oft by morning steal to heaven, 
Corydon. 



THE CHRISTMAS FOLK 

The men that meet at Christmas 

Be merrie Christian men — 
They greet with cheery chaffing, 
Shake sides with genial laughing, 
And pledge with hearty quaffing, 
And cheer with ten times ten : 
For the men that meet at Christmas 
Be merrie Christian men. 



The folk that feast at Christmas 
Be festive Christian folk — 

With gaiety untiring, 

About the faggot's firing, 

They, to their heart's desiring, 
Crack bottle and crack joke: 

For the folk that feast at Christmas 
Be festive Christian folk. 

121 



The boys that come at Christmas 

Be noisie Christian boys — 
They make strange apple-pies in 
The bed their grand-dad lies in, 
And battle loud for prize in 

A tournament of noise : 
For the boys that come at Christmas 
Be noisie Christian boys. 



The girls that flirt at Christmas 

Be prettie Christian girls — 
They buy the boys' delayment 
Paying with kisses payment, 
And float their fairy raiment, 

And toss their teasing curls : 
For the girls that flirt at Christmas 
Be prettie Christian girls. 



The sires that crone at Christmas 
Be sober Christian sires — 

Full many a head that hoar is 

Bewails departed glories, 

And tells fine crusted stories 
Round hospitable fires : 

For the sires that crone at Christmas 
Be sober Christian sires. 

122 



The wives that chat at Christmas 
Be kindlie Christian wives — 

They broider fair narrations 

Stitch crewel-work creations, 

And pick at reputations, 

And canvass neighbours' lives : 

For the wives that chat at Christmas 
Be kindlie Christian wives. 

And all that joy at Christmas 

Be jollie Christians all — 
With glass and silver shining, 
And jollie young folk dining, 
And jollie old folk wining, 

And laughter through the hall : 
For the folk that joy at Christmas 

Be jollie Christians all. 



123 



J 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: July 2009 

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